One of the odder things about being a baseball writer “of a certain age”, to use the elegant French phrase, is that sometimes I am brought up short by the realization of exactly how much water has passed under the bridge.
My perception of the Los Angeles Angels, the California Angels, or the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, or whatever iteration of their name might be just down the road, will probably always be that it is an expansion franchise. So as the camera panned around Angel Stadium last night during the pre-game, as Buck and Pat, or Puck and Bat (better names for sports broadcasters, no?) blathered on about this and that, I suddenly noticed that they were highlighting the big logos around the stadium with the number 50 emblazoned on them. The reason for the 50 on the logos, so I learned (the twin hairdos are occasionally informative, I admit) is that this year the Angels’ franchise is celebrating the fiftieth year of its stadium, which opened for the 1966 season.
This puts Angels Stadium in the top tier of senior citizens among stadia currently in operation in the big leagues. Not only is it a shock that the franchise is 55 years old and the stadium 50, it’s also a shock that they haven’t torn down and replaced their ball park with something new and glitzy, more suitable to the Hollowood vibe that inevitably hovers over any team playing in the L.A. area. That being said, it should also be noted that when the Disney people took over the franchise, they completed a significant renovation of the park in 1997, so in that regard it’s more up-to-date than our concrete canyon on the lake.
It also made me pause to reflect on the creation of the Angels franchise, which was very much rooted in the desire of the American League owners to access the cash bonanza of the California market for baseball that had first been breeched by the more adventurous ownership of the Dodgers and Giants franchises of the National League. There were franchise moves prior to the two New York teams moving west; it’s not like they were the first. The Boston Braves had already moved to Milwaukee, the St. Louis Browns to Baltimore, and the Philadelphia A’s to Kansas City in the early fifties. But those were all nearly moribund franchises, second clubs in cities where the other franchise had become dominant. In the case of the Braves, the Brownies, as they were affectionately known, and the A’s, it was simple: move, or fold. Sadly, the whole peripatetic franchise thing erased one of the pillars of the eternal stability of baseball as it once was. And, as you are aware, only the Browns remained in Baltimore, while the Braves and A’s also fled their second homes for newer, more lucrative surroundings. If nothing else, the baseball fan of the modern age is sure to be more cynical by a large margin than the fans of those earlier, more innocent days.
But after that first wave of moves, necessary for franchise survival, the moves of the Dodgers and the Giants in 1958 were very different propositions indeed, as the two franchises both sought a wider fan base and new stadia in order to improve an already good financial situation. The general distaste among traditional baseball fans on the East Coast to the hijacking of the beloved Dodgers and Giants was to put quite a damper on the notion of moving successful franchises. From this point on, groups hoping to see a major league baseball franchise in their city would pursue the route of trying to acquire an expansion franchise. One of the first and most successful of such ventures was the pursuit by famous cowboy singer/songwriter Gene Autry of an American League franchise for Los Angeles, which resulted in the birth of the Angels in 1961, with Autry as their owner and chief executive.
Thus we have the Angels of today, one of the oldest of the “new” teams in the big leagues.
The good news that greeted the Blue Jays as they reported to the ball park in Los Angeles was that the MRI on Josh Donaldson’s hip was negative. The better news was that he was back in the lineup as the designated hitter. The best news of all was that not only did he break out of his horrendous 0 for 23 slump, but he did so with a vengeance, hitting two doubles and a single with two walks in five plate appearances.
Not coincidentally, Toronto played a very solid game on both sides of the ball to support the oh-so-reliable Jay Happ as he pitched six innings of one-run, three-hit ball to earn his nineteenth win of the season.
It was a win the Jays badly needed after their terrible showing against the Tampa Bay Rays in Toronto this week. More so, it was a modest offensive breakout that was even more badly needed after the utter hopelessness they have displayed at the plate since the beginning of September. It’s amazing how a few well-placed base hits and the odd RBI can do so much to dispel the gloom hanging over a slumping team.
Despite being twenty games below .500 after tonight’s loss to the Jays, the Angels represent a difficult and at times dangerous challenge. First off, you should score some runs off their pitching. They have had a horrendous string of injuries to their pitching staff, and have lost most of their pencilled-in rotation from the beginning of the year to season-ending injuries. They’ve lost their closer, Huston Street, for the year. It seems like almost every game they trot out a starter who’s just been signed, or activated, or acquired at the trade deadline.
However, that is not to say that the Angels are incapable of finding a starter who can throw together a decent performance against a team in the throes of an extended team-wide batting slump. And we know just which team we’re talking about here.
So there’s still a premium on getting a very good performance out of Toronto’s starter, because all of their other woes aside, the Halos still have one of the most fearsome 2-3 or 3-4, as the case may be, combinations in all of baseball, in Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. The key to beating the Angels absolutely lies in not letting these two hurt you, and especially not letting them come to the plate with base-runners already on.
Over six innings plus a couple of batters Jay Happ allowed only one earned run on three hits. He was only touched up in the seventh by a homer to left off the bat of shortstop Andrelton Simmons, which unfortunately followed an error by Darwin Barney at third on a hard-hit ball off his glove by Jefry Marte. By then, as we’ll see, Happ was working with a five-nothing cushion, courtesy of two runs scored off Angels’ starter Daniel Wright in the fourth, and a three-run Russell Martin homer off reliever Jose Valdez in the sixth that cashed Donaldson, walked by Wright as the last batter he faced, and Bautista, walked by Valdez.
The fact that Happ carried a shutout into the seventh on a night when he didn’t have his best stuff, witnessed by three walks and only three strikeouts, can be attributed largely to the fact that he managed to keep Trout and Pujols from hurting him. Trout went 0 for 1 with two walks against Happ, and Pujols got two hits, both singles, neither with runners on base at all, let alone in scoring position. It wasn’t for lack of trying on Trout’s part, mind you. In the third he drove Jose Bautista to the wall in right where Bautista made a nice running catch. In the eighth, with Grilli in the game, he hit one even harder, and Bautista had to leap at the wall to haul it down. It’s a measure of Bautista’s struggles this season that he allowed himself a shrug and a sheepish grin after the second catch, I think in honour of the fact that he had shown that he could still contribute defensively.
BenGriNa did a good job following Happ, though both Joaquin Benoit (pinch-hit single by former Jay Cliff Pennington) and Grilli (sawed-off—seriously sawed off—bloop single by Pujols followed by a solid single by C.J. Cron) were touched up a bit. Osuna breezed in the ninth with a strikeout and a couple of easy grounders on eleven pitches, which is fine, but once again why was he out there in a non-save? (Since the Jays had scored two more in the top of the ninth to extend the lead to 7-2.) In the first game of a four-game series?
As for the Jays’ hitters, it sure looked like another round of being stifled by the unknown pitcher tonight. Daniel Wright was making only his second start for the Angels after being traded from Cincinnati, where he’d also made two starts in his rookie year. He came into the game with a record with the Angels of no wins and two losses, and an ERA of 7.50. That’s right, 7.50. Now, how did he do?
Well, not bad at all. In the first three innings, he walked two and gave up one hit, a single to Jose Bautista in the second. Bautista was erased on a caught stealing. Before you have a stroke, let me say that it was a botched hit and run with Russell Martin at the plate, as Manager John Gibbons tried to “stir things up”. The first walk was erased by a double play, so he only faced one batter over the minimum through three. Happ, by the way, also walked two and gave up a hit in the first three, on seven pitches more than the Angels’ hurler. So we had an incipient pitchers’ duel between Jay Happ and Daniel Wright (huh?)
The Jays finally broke through against Wright in the fourth, and for once they did it without leaving the yard.
Josh Donaldson lashed a double to left centre, his first of three hits, to lead off. Edwin Encarnacion moved him to third with a single to left, as Donaldson had to contain his usual aggressiveness on the bases because of the hip issue. Jose Bautista singled to right opposite the shift to score Donaldson and send Edwin to third. Russell Martin cashed Edwin with a sac fly to right. Going with the pitch. Situational hitting. Not wasting the leadoff double. Didn’t somebody just write about all this recently?
Still following Wright, he retired the side in order in the fifth, and came to the sixth inning, which would be his last, down only 2-0, but about to have his good start messed up by the Angels’ suspect bullpen. Manager Mike Scioscia pulled Wright immediately after he walked Donaldson to lead off the sixth. He went out with a line of 3 runs (Donaldson would score on Martin’s home run), 4 hits, 3 walks, 3 strikeouts, and 79 pitches. Jose Valdez came in and had to retire Edwin twice. First he popped him up to the catcher but Jett Bandy misjudged the ball behind the plate, got to it too late, and muffed it. So Valdez took matters into his own hands and retired Edwin on a called third strike. Then he went a little hairy, and let the game get out of control. He wild-pitched Donaldson to second, walked Bautista, and grooved his first pitch to Martin, who gleefully tomahawked a no-doubt line drive out of the park for three runs, watching it with admiration as soon as he hit it. Valdez walked one more then closed out the inning, but the horse was gone.
Happ retired Kole Calhoun leading off the Angels’ sixth on a great play that was totally unconscious. Calhoun hit a hard one-hopper back to the mound, on the first base side. Happ, falling off toward third, and seeing the ball hit to the other side, continued to turn until his back was to the plate and his glove dangling open. He glanced back at the ball just as it slapped into his glove for an easy pitcher-to-first groundout. A definite improvement over his having to feel like a bumper pad in a pinball game. Happ would walk Mike Trout following, in this case a good move as he was able to retire Pujols and cleanup hitter C.J. Cron after.
After reliever Mike Morin stranded Donaldson’s second double, a two-out shot to right centre, Happ faced his last two batters, retired neither of them, and yielded to Benoit with the lead down to 5-2, but it wasn’t all on him. The first hitter, Jefry Marte, hit a hard grounder right at Darwin Barney at third, but Barney booted it, in what was later ruled an error after the scorer had originally given Marte a hit. Andrelton Simmons promptly lined one out to left field for two runs, and Happ was finished, having given up one earned run, on 3 hits, 3 walks, 3 strikeouts, throwing 92 pitches. A tidy performance worthy of win number 19 for the season by Happ.
Benoit, Jason Grilli, and Roberto Osuna finished up on the hill for Toronto, as described earlier, with Osuna’s save opportunity already off the table when the Blue Jays added two more runs in the ninth off Deolis Guerra before A.J. Achter came in to bail him out. Once again the runs were counted without benefit of the long ball.
With one out Kevin Pillar hit a ground-rule double to right. Barney moved him to third with a hard single to centre, then advanced on a Guerra wild pitch. The Angels played their infield in for Devon Travis, who bounced one through the left side to drive in both runners and extend the lead to 7-2. Guerra gave up Donaldson’s third hit, a single, and walked Edwin to load the bases before Achter came in to induce Bautista to ground into a double play.
Nothing like an opponent having a bad year, a little California sunshine, and a little time away from the packed pressure cooker of their home park to give Toronto’s struggling heroes a new lease on life.
R.A. Dickey will have to be good tomorrow night to keep the good vibes good.
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