When I heard the news that the Angels had signed Hideki Matsui this last off-season, I was exceptionally pleased. Another free agent bargain on a savvy, veteran slugger to help bolster the Angel line-up. Yes! Godzilla was coming to Anaheim!!!
Small problem. The Angels got Godzilla, but it wasn’t the city-crushing, Mothra-beating Godzilla that the league feared. No, the Angels went out and got the god awful Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla.
Dammit.
Do’h!!! The Angels accidentally got the weak, lame-ass Godzilla.
Through his first 19 games as an Angel, Matsui looked like he was going to be worth every penny, hitting .310 with a .943 OPS. Angel fans had even gone so far to create a special section in the right field bleachers dubbed “Matsuiland,” that is how quickly he managed to endear himself to fans in Anaheim.
My, oh, my how quickly things changed as Godzilla has now gone from World Series hero to total DH zero and is the poster boy for the many underachieving Angel hitters this year. Since his torrid start to his Angel career, he has gone 13-for-82 with just one homer, one double and 18 strikeouts. His average has now dropped all the way down to .229 and his OPS is a Robb Quinlan-like .675. So much for Godzilla laying waste to the the AL West.
Instead, Godzilla has been decimating the Angel line-up from the inside out. All throughout his prolonged slump, Matsui has been hitting in the heart of the Angel batting order where his failures have only been magnified. Most of his slide, Matsui has been hitting fourth or fifth, wasting valuable run-producing opportunities. It was only recently that Mike Scioscia, he who never questions the ability of veterans, finally started to give up and moved him down to sixth or seventh in the order which is a pretty damning move unto itself. Scioscia wants to believe in the power of Godzilla, but even he can’t keep it going.
At first, everyone, not just Scioscia, had too much faith in Matsui and his struggles were just chalked up to being a small slump, but that line of logic just doesn’t fly anymore. Professional hitters of Matsui’s caliber don’t slump for 80+ at-bats. That leaves two possible conclusions: he is either hurt or just plain getting old. Whatever the reason, the Angels would be best served to replace him, only that same faith in him the fooled us into thinking this was a slump also fooled the Angels into not having a valid back-up plan for Matsui.
Who should take over at DH? Reggie Willits? Kevin Fransden? Michael Ryan? Pass, pass and pass.
The Halos are having a hard enough time trying to figure out what to do with Brandon Wood, having to potentially replace Hideki Matsui as well is just too much. It certainly doesn’t help matters that Angel fans are forced to watch Matsui continuing to flail away at the plate while Vladimir Guerrero has somehow discovered the fountain of youth in Texas. Who knew that Godzilla’s one true weakness was irony?
Now the Angels have no other choice but to hope they can keep hiding Matsui in the bottom half of the order and that he somehow can turn his season. Good luck with that.