They're No Angels

 

Never would have thought that the most depressing team to talk about week after week would be the Angels. They almost had it. They were so good in May! Everything was working! And then....AND THEN...

I mean...they've won 14 games since May 15. FOURTEEN GAMES IN TWO MONTHS. THEY WON TEN IN MAY BEFORE THEN. What HAPPENED? How did this team go from 'this might actually work' to 'well at least Trout and Ohtani are here, again'?

I wish I could tell you. This doesn't entirely make sense to me.

I mean, it's not like major players got injured. Rendon didn't end up on the IL til after the losing streaks began. It's not like the teams they were playing before were easy ones, they won games against Tampa, Boston, Cleveland and Texas. It's not like the matchups got worse, it was Oakland and Toronto that put them on this track. But eventually coming off a few blown series and then having to play the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Mets and Dodgers one after the other, as all of them were gaining momentum...yeah, that can't have helped.

It's as simple as this. They lost a little bit of momentum, then because a lot of players, like Jo Adell, Andrew Velasquez, Brandon Marsh and Jared Walsh, were sort of playing okay anyway, them falling into slumps slowed the momentum as well, and once the offense is a bit neutralized, then it's not hard to go after people like Michael Lorenzen, Reid Detmers and Jose Suarez. The team didn't suddenly get bad, it just lost enough games that the mediocre parts of it outweighed the parts that were good. 

There are still fragments of a good team left here. Patrick Sandoval is still having a great season, with a 2.95 ERA and 85 Ks, despite a 2-3 record with a ton of no-decisions. Taylor Ward is still hitting .290 and carrying some of his May momentum. Noah Syndergaard is having his best season in years by refusing to overexert himself and delivering solid starts. And, yeah, Trout and Ohtani are awesome and will be for a bit. But the fact that, once the wins stopped, you realized that the highlights of this team were that few and far between is pretty sad. There was a lot more depth, it seemed, in April. And then people got hurt, stopped hitting, and left. And now this is what we're left with.

I don't think the Angels are part of the story anymore. The Mariners have won several straight [11 at the time of writing, though I'm not sure what they did last night], the Astros still own the division, and the Rangers act as the spoiler. The Angels could still deliver some accolades, but I'm not sure if they'll apply to Angels who are not Mike Trout or Shohei Ohtani. 

Coming Tomorrow- A rookie for the Diamondbacks who my dad was convinced is gonna be a star the moment he saw him play.