The Los Angeles Angels Rotation Is It’s Own Answer

The first week of May is early in the season, just 31 games in, but the Los Angeles Angels starting rotation is already circling their wagons.

Like in the last act of a 1950s western, the Los Angeles Angels pitching staff has been shot up and bloodied, reduced in numbers, and as it looks right now, the cavalry’s not coming. The Angels are going to have to fix themselves, or — figurative — die trying,

The Los Angeles Angels got fat early, playing well and overwhelming weak Oakland and Texas squads. However, in the recent 12-game stretch against the Red Sox, Giants, Astros, and Yankees — unlike the A’s and Rangers, actual contending teams — the Angels got butchered, going 3-9, and were easily swept by both Boston and New York.

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In what has become a familiar tune, the starting pitchers failed miserably. In those dozen games, the starters posted a combined 6.88 ERA, six times allowing four or more runs, five times not even getting to the fifth inning before getting knocked out. In the team’s first real test against quality opposition, the Angels were humiliated.

Car salesmen have a term for this: “cascading failure,” when one failure triggers a series of other problems, creating failures across the board. Bad starting pitching triggers cascading failures, forcing an already weakened bullpen to be even more overworked, while the offense is pressured to play from behind nearly every single game.

So what can be done? Some critics have pointed to the slew of injuries that have hit the Angel rotation hard, and suggested that General Manager Billy Eppler should have signed some free agent starters this winter. However, both Lance Lynn and Alex Cobb have been miserable for their new teams, and the Angels weren’t about to pony up for Jake Arrieta. They came into 2018 with one new arm, Shohei Ohtani, and a bunch of recovering ones. Let’s take a closer look at each one:

Garrett Richards
6 starts, 3-1, 4.88 ERA, 1.52 WHIP

There isn’t one guy to be blamed for a collective mess, but if you had to pick one, you’d pick this guy. His April 28th start against the Yankees was a perfect illustration of what Richards’ problems this season have been: he allowed a one-out single, and then with a man on he has to pitch from the stretch and suddenly can’t throw a strike unless it was a batting practice fastball. A walk and an error followed, and then Richards predictably grooves a pitch that goes for a double, and the route was on. The next inning, he he allowed two more walks around two more extra-base hits.

Garrett Richards is going to turn 30 years old at the end of May. This is his eighth major league season and his tenth professional season. Despite having some of the best raw stuff — he still throws 98 MPH and possesses the highest spin rate of any slider in all of baseball — his inexplicable lack of composure with men on base is the definition of “cascading failure.” Nominally the ace of the rotation, Richards has become one of its biggest problems. Even in games where the Angels are winning handily, such as his April 14th start in Kansas City against a weak Royals lineup, a fifth inning lead-off walk triggered two more baserunners and three wild pitches. Asked to try to throw a sixth inning, Richards walked the leadoff man on five pitches, and forced Mike Scioscia to go to the pen.

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It’s been over two years since Richards has been a reliable starter. In what should be the prime of his career, he’s been spending most of that prime hunting for Strike One — he only throws that 52% of the time, one of the worst marks in baseball. This is Richards’ contract season; he’ll be a free agent after this year. His arm will earn him another contract, without question, but what he hasn’t earned is trust. For this season, there’s nothing the Angels can do but keep running him out there and hope that, the further he gets from his injury issues, the better he gets. For better or worse, the Angels can’t get the post-season without him.

Tyler Skaggs
6 Starts, 3-2, 3.03 ERA, 1.16 WHIP

While Richards was supposed to be the ace, Tyler Skaggs was simply supposed to eat innings. He’s done much more than that, with impressive back-to-back outings against Houston and the Yankees, and giving the Angels the reliable starter they so desperately needs. Unlike Richards, Skaggs throws a first strike nearly two-thirds of the time, allowing him to set up his curveball for later in the count.

This is a big year for Skaggs. Since missing the entire 2015 season recovering from Tommy John surgery, he’s been beset with one thing after another. 2018 is the first season in four years where he’s started with a completely clean bill of health and a guaranteed rotation slot

Scioscia has put his trust in Skaggs, and Skaggs has rewarded his manager by throwing more innings and more pitches than anyone else (though that’s party a function of him merely being able to stay healthy), while allowing just two homers thus far. Count on Scioscia riding Skaggs’ left arm more and more as the season progresses.

Shohei Ohtani
4 starts, 2-1,  4.43 ERA, 1.13 WHIP

The hype is justified, and the stuff is real, but we are nowhere near peak Shohei yet. The Angels are treating their prized rookie as if he were made of cotton candy, and given how many of their other starters have gone down with injury, it’s hard to blame them. Subsequently, Ohtani has only made four starts. Two of them were great, one of them was cut short, and the last one, against a powerful Houston lineup, probably tells us the most about him.

The April 24th start in Houston was the first game where normally nonplussed Othani showed real frustration. He wasn’t getting consistent calls from the home plate umpire — he would walk five and strike out seven in just five-plus innings — and after a walk that MLB’s Statcast showed as being a strike at the knees, he grooved a pitch that was hit for a two-run homer. Instead of melting down, however, he was able to grind through that inning. It was particularly telling that, with two outs in the inning, he would be hitting the outside black at 101 MPH with repeated precision despite being frustrated with his command all game.

20-plus innings is not enough to make the concrete grandiose claims his raw stuff inspires, but it is enough to tell us a few things. For starters (pun intended), while the Angels are treating him like a rookie, he’s not one, not in the traditional sense. At 17, in Japan’s national high school baseball tournament, he was throwing 99 MPH. At 20, he was Japan’s Pitcher of the Year, at 21 he was both Pitcher AND Designated Hitter of the year, and led his team to the national championship.

Now, Ohtani’s 23, almost 24. It’s his first year in the big leagues, but it’s his sixth professional season, and he’s spent all six in the most difficult league available to him. He has a baby face, but he’s no baby, and the Angels need to start using him like they mean it. They’re starting to get close to doing that, moving him up in the lineup behind Albert Pujols (he really should be batting behind Mike Trout). A tweaked ankle against the Yankees kept him from his regular rotation start, but he’s expected to get back to the regular Sunday slot he’s worked in so effectively in Japan.

Scioscia allowed Ohtani to start the sixth inning in Houston, after that long, demanding fifth inning in Houston. It’s a signal that he’s willing to see just what kind of weapon he really has.

Andrew Heaney
4 starts, 1-1, 5.31 ERA, 1.38 WHIP

One of the best pitching prospects of 2015 is finally healthy. After missing nearly all of the last two seasons due to injury, Andrew Heaney got off to a slow start this season, then started showing his stuff. Against the Yankees, he threw five strong innings, striking out nine while working out of several tough situations without losing his composure and compounding hits with walks. In his next start, at home against Baltimore, he did the same, working out of difficult situations with strikeouts while not making things worse for himself.

It’s easy to look at the box scores for those two games and get excited; just two runs allowed over 11 innings is pretty solid work, after all, and 24 strikeouts in just 20.1 innings is something to hang his hat on. However, he’s still less than 50 innings removed from Tommy John surgery, and the road back promises to be uneven. That he has his velocity is a good sign, and that he appears to be fully healthy is a great one. However, health can be fleeting. For now, Heaney will be worked on a short leash and under a microscope.

Nick Tropeano
4 starts, 1-2, 3.42 ERA, 1.14 WHIP

“I’m not shutting anything down,” said Tropeano after he was placed on the DL one day after throwing a sterling 6-plus innings of shutout, 1-hit ball against the Orioles. Like Heaney, Tropeano has done nothing but recover from surgery for the last year and a half, and he’s not eager to Netflix and chill now that he’s back.

Tropeano was never the prospect that Heaney and Skaggs were, a junkballing control-monger who didn’t throw hard enough for the Astros, who traded him to Anaheim. Since hitting the bigs, though, Tropeano’s thrown much harder than projected, coming in consistently in the low-90s, allowing him to more effectively set up his change, splitter, and curve. Health is always an issue, but Tropeano has consistently performed beyond expectations. In his two previous seasons with the Angels, Tropeano’s combined for 106 innings for a 3.65 ERA and peripherals that suggest he’s no fluke.

The Angels had hoped to keep in in Triple-A to start the year, but injuries and need have changed those plans. Now, Tropeano’s own injury might change his plans for 2018. The Angels are claiming the DL stint is merely precautionary, but the Angels are notoriously unforthcoming where pitching injuries are concerned. For example, see Matt Shoemaker. The supposed #2 starter, Shoemaker’s strained right forearm was supposed to be nothing serious and his MRI “merely precautionary.” His precautionary stint on the 10-day DL has hit 30 days as of this writing, and the Angels don’t expect him to pitch until at least June. This is very possibly front office-speak for “he needs surgery.” Along with the loss of J.C. Ramirez, the Angels’ supposed surplus of starters became a dearth, forcing them to bring up…

Jaime Barria
3 starts, 2-1, 3.46 ERA, 1.23 WHIP

After a strong third start in which he held the Orioles hitless into the sixth inning, the best pitching prospect in the Angel system has, for the time being, established himself as the rotation’s sixth starter. As he did in his first start in Texas, Barria showed excellent mound presence, a strong command of his repertoire, and a good control of his pitches. His repertoire features three quality pitches (fastball, changeup, slider), and he’s around the plate enough that he can get plenty of weak contact.

However, once he began to wear in the sixth, he showed what happened to him in his second start, against the Giants. Barria can throw all three pitches for strikes, but he doesn’t have anything that will overpower hitters — his best pitch is his change-up. As that record-breaking 21-pitch at-bat against Brandon Belt showed, hitters can get to him if he loses just a bit of his sharpness.