An Angel series win over the Mariners in which we discover that God put the Mariners on this Earth to help the Angels stop their slumps.
Game 1 – Angels 8, Mariners 3
Game 2 – Angels 3, Mariners 2
Game 3 – Angels 7, Mariners 6
Game 4 – Mariners 2, Angels 1
Los Angeles Angels of AWESOMENESS
- The Lord said let the Angels end their slumps. Lo and behold, he created the Seattle Mariners and all was right in the city of Anaheim again. To put it mildly, the Angels badly needed to get off to a good start to the second half and being given a four-game homestand against Seattle was a true blessing from the heavens. Even though the Halos couldn’t quite pull off the sweep, they have to be feeling pretty good as their offense showed some signs of life (though it could sure stand to show some more) and everyone in the rotation performed solidly (OK, I am being generous to Saunders here, but you get the point). Let’s hope this series win gives them a much-needed confidence boost now that they are set to hit the road against some of the top teams in the AL.
- I am reluctant to even mention it because I feel like I am going to jinx it, but Brian Fuentes looked, well, like a real closer this series. He slammed the door on two one-run save opportunities and two out of his three outings were clean 1-2-3 innings. Amazingly, his ERA is even now down under 4.00 which makes the rest of his stats look rather respectable.
- So what do we do now that Jered Weaver has outdueled Felix Hernandez three out of three times this season? I mean, they call Hernandez “King Felix” but it is painfully obvious at this point that Weaver is his clear superior, so shouldn’t he get a better nickname? I’m thinking Emperor Jered or maybe even Supreme Overlord Jered. I’m welcome to other submissions.
- Excellent, Mike Napoli found the power switch and flipped it back into the on position. I don’t know what Scioscia was thinking starting Paul McAnulty over Napoli in the first game, but it seems pretty well decided now that Naps needs to be in the lineup after he responded to that inexplicable benching with five hits, including two homers and a double, in three games. In fact, it is so well decided that the Angels DFA’d McAnulty yesterday ending his reign of terror at first base.
- Juan Rivera has always been a strong second half player, but he is taking it really literally based on his performance this series with six hits, four runs, one RBI and a game-winning homer. Not that I’m complaining.
Los Angeles Angels of FAIL
- Ervin can’t but support
- The Angels bullpen is like playing whack-a-mole, every time they fix one problem, another one pops up. Fuentes seems to be fine now and Rodney looked much better, but now Kevin Jepsen seems to be broken. D’oh! He didn’t really make many mistakes, but it still resulted in him blowing one save and then losing the series finisher. On the bright side, the longer the Angel bullpen is problematic this month, the more likely it is Tony Reagins will quit fooling himself into thinking it will fix itself, thus convincing him to finally go out and trade for another arm for the relief corps.
- Am I the only one that was certain that Torii Hunter was going to hit a walk-off homer on Sunday since it was his birthday? I am Jack’s sense of bitter disappointment.
Halo Hero of the Series
OK, so Bobby didn’t have the best series, but he still is deserving of this award. The reason why is that he kicked the series off by cashing in his very first RBI opportunity in the very first inning of the very first game. With all the struggles the Angels had scoring runs before the break, and with Abreu being a big reason for that scoring slump, it had to be a huge stress reliever for the team to see Abreu snap himself and the rest of the lineup out of their funk right away.