Felix Hernandez may be one of the best pitchers in baseball and the Angels may have one of the weakest lineups, but for some reason whenever you put those two together, against all logic, the Angels ALWAYS win.
Despite needing just 98 pitches to get through eight innings and yet still finding a way to fan 12 Halos while allowing just four hits and no walks, King Felix came away the loser against the Angels once again, moving his career mark to 4-8 against them. What does this mean? I have no idea because we all should know by now that a pitcher’s win-loss record actually has fairly little to do with his own performance and today’s game was a perfect example of that because Felix was fantastic and still came away with the loss, not that I’m complaining.
If anything, it is just an indictment of how bad the Mariners roster is. They just can’t support their ace even against an offense as pathetic as that of the Angels. And in case you aren’t getting what I’m driving at, it is that the Angel offense still stinks, so we should not be getting all happy that they did beat Felix today. They got lucky that Ervin Santana was on again and that the Seattle lineup is even worse than their own.
The dangerous thing about winning is that it has a nasty way of covering up flaws like, for example, that the Halos won this series but scored just four runs in the three games. That’s a problem that can easily get overlooked if you just say, “Hey, man, things are awesome! The Angels just beat King Felix!”
Yay for the victory, but boo before the way in which the victory was attained.
Game Notes
- After today, Erick Aybar’s OBP is now down to .304… and he hit leadoff today. So, yeah, there’s that.
- Oh, and there’s also the whole Abreu hitting cleanup despite his now .342 SLG and despite Mark Trumbo batting seventh in the same lineup with a SLG of .495 AND he hit a home run today that nearly hit the dang Orange Crush overpass. Even the Mariner announcers were deriding Scioscia’s decision to keep Trumbo buried in the order. So, yeah, there’s that too.
- I know that Santana’s pitch count was getting up there after he gave up that homer to Carp, but couldn’t Sosh have let him finish the game? I mean, this Mariner offense isn’t exactly scary, so I think Ervin could’ve managed to keep them in check for two more outs.
Halo Hero
He didn’t get the complete game, but maybe getting the Halo Hero will serve as some kind of consolation.