Well this has easily been the most exciting Angels game of the season, and I’ve been so lucky to be chosen by the baseball gods to recap such a wondrous evening of baseball. I know that I said the Angels had practically every factor in their favor for tonight’s game, from Hughes struggles in Anaheim to the hot bat of Mark Trumbo; and I really couldn’t have been more wrong.
From the very beginning of the game things were turning quickly on the Angels, way too quickly for them to conceivable pull a win out of their collective asses, though I guess when their rectums have been cranial free for a decent amount of time it wouldn’t be too hard to find a win up there. From an ugly Aybar error to ace Weaver exiting the game with a freak injury it seemed like the Angels were too deep in a hole to dig themselves out of, though I guess when you look past all the early deficit “doom and gloom” us Angel fans so quickly cast upon this team it was a little hard to see the fact that Hughes is terrible against the Angels and the Angels have quite a few hot hands in the lineup who got to work fast.
9 crazy innings, one home run, and a whole lot of hurt feelings from the visiting dugout make this easily the sweetest game of the season yet.
I’m not going to mention Jered Weaver’s injury in much detail because dammit that ESPN headline that I shall not name really pissed me off. Instead why don’t you watch this awesome college baseball play instead?
Game Recap
- SEVEN GAME WIN STREAK!!! Can you believe it?!?! It’s hard to believe the Angels could battle tooth and nail against a legitimate team to bring home a huge win that adds on to a big streak the Angels have been building up for the past week. This game was a pitching catastrophe for both sides, especially the Angels since they had to call on 5 different relievers from the bullpen to carry them through the game. The Angels worked 3 tolerable innings from Cassevah, who actually wasn’t as bad as a lot of people were making him out to be aside from his one throwing error and loose control of the strikezone. He came into a mentally crushing situation and he pitched through it like a champ, never really giving the Angels comfortable room to work with but keeping the Yankees from taking a sizeable lead.
- I just need to throw this in here, but David Carpenter is really getting screwed in the stats department. He probably has the most unfair 5+ ERA of all relievers in baseball. He’s been throwing well for a young pitcher like himself, especially when he gets thrown into a fire in seemingly every appearance. I guess you could say his performance today was “gutsy”, though it was slightly tarnished by a bad inning by Isringhausen, who really shouldn’t have came in in a no out 2 man on situation; and a botched catch by Mark Trumbo. Walden, on the other hand, had one great inning followed by a far too close for comfort second inning, but it was good enough to earn him a win in the end. I intentionally refused to mention Takahashi since he seems to be getting better the less people realize he still pitches for this team. So yeah, we’ll just leave it at that.
- Where do I start with the offense? Well for one, everyone in the starting lineup came away with a hit. Not too shabby at all. Each middle of the order bat had at least 2 RBI’s. That’s pretty damn good. Trout AND Trumbo both came away with big home runs, Trumbo’s being a walkoff solo shot in the 9th. I almost didn’t believe that the offense the Angels had expected to start the season off with would actually show up after the first month of the season. This offense has been slowly improving over the past couple months, I really can’t wait to see where they’ll be in another months time.
Notable offensive performances: M. Trout 2-5 2R 1RBI 1HR, M.Izturis 1-5 1R, A.Pujols 2-4 1R 1BB 2K, K. Morales 2-5 1R 3RBI 1K, M.Trumbo 3-5 3R 2RBI 1HR 1K, H.Kendrick 2-3 3RBI, E. Aybar 1-4, P.Bourjos 1-4, B.Wilson 1-2 1BB 1K
Halo Hero
Figuring out this Halo Hero is as easy as it is for Mark Trumbo to hit walk off bombs.