An Angel loss to the Tigers in which Brian Fuentes makes a very unwelcome return.
Los Angeles Angels of AWESOMENESS
- Like I said last night, Kendry Morales is heating up. His two-run homer was huge for the Angels and should have held up on a night where the line-up was otherwise completely held down. Too bad it went to waste.
- Very interesting. Jason Bulger gets shelled with runners on base last night but comes in to work the eighth but starts the inning clean and gets through without so much as a scratch. It is almost like this is a trend or something, if only someone had pointed this out earlier. Oh, wait, they did. And by “they,” I mean me. The same me that has been making this point dating back to last season and hammering on it ever since.
- At least Tito almost saved some face when he picked off Carlos Guillen for the second out of the ninth. I really thought he was going to get out of it after that. Boy am I an idiot.
- Jered Weaver just keeps on rolling. He has been fantastic in every start this season and tonight was no exception. He got very little run support but didn’t let that bother him. He really resolved this whole “is he an ace?” debate before it ever even got started, didn’t he?
Los Angeles Angels of FAIL
- I have to nitpick Weaver a little bit because he continues to display one fatal flaw: the longball. He has given up a homer in every single start thus far and getting taken yard by whoever that Kelly guy was doesn’t exactly inspire the utmost confidence. If he can just minimize all the homers he allowed, he might be untouchable.
- I am a tiny bit concerned that Weaver was asked to throw 117 pitches tonight. While I think that pitch counts can be overrated, it is still kind of early in the season for such a workload. Still, I don’t really blame Scioscia because he had few options out of the bullpen and getting an extra inning from Weaver was a big boon for the team.
- It would have been very interesting to see what Mike Scioscia would have done tonight had Fernando Rodney been rested enough to pitch. As the end result proved, Brian Fuentes has no business facing Miguel Cabrera. This is 100% why I favor a closer-by-committee arrangement because you get burned by just putting a guy out there because that is “his inning.” The Angels paid for it dearly tonight. Let’s hope Sosh learned from it.
- ????
Angel A-Hole of the Game
God, I hate you, Fuentes. I hate you so much.
GOD DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuentes can’t even get through one effing batter in his return from the disabled list before blowing the save. It is almost like he is trying to piss off every Angel fan while simultaneously making Mike Scioscia look like a fool for promising him the closer job wouldn’t be taken away from him. The really brutal part is that the Angels desperately needed Tito to come back and not be a problem because they really only have Rodney and sometimes Kevin Jepsen pitching well out of the pen. Now Fuentes is just one more guy to worry about and Sosh is going to have a tough decision to make the next time the Angels take a close lead in the ninth inning.