LA Angels Series Preview: Getting to the Wild Card through Seattle

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OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – MAY 29: Luis Rengifo #4 of the Los Angeles Angels is congratulated by teammates after he scored in the ninth inning against the Oakland Athletics at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on May 29, 2019 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) /

The LA Angels are inching closer and closer to snatching up the 2nd Wild Card spot in the AL with every series win. After a far too close for comfort series win against the Athletics we’ll see if the Angels can maintain this winning attitude while facing another AL West opponent.

Even if the LA Angels do push themselves into the 2nd Wild Card spot what are the chances they’ll be able to maintain their position all season long?

The Angels are only 2.5 games back from the 2nd Wild Card spot in the AL. Believe it or not, this team isn’t as bad as everyone says. I’m not going to deny that the starting pitching is the worst in all of baseball and I won’t ignore the bullpen woes as of late, but in the case of the bullpen these trends happen over the course of the season.

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No matter how good a team’s bullpen is there is no way that immaculate success can be maintained for 162+ games. Bullpens trend up and down, but with the Angels we’ve seen exactly how high of a ceiling this ‘pen can perform at.

At best the Angels have one of the best bullpens in baseball; there is a load of talent including Hansel Robles and the Ty Buttrey, with enough Triple A depth to keep fresh arms coming up and down all season and raise the life expectancy of these arms over the course of a season. That’s not even including the eventual return of 2018 closer Keynan Middleton.

Of course, the starting pitching has been an embarrassment, but that doesn’t mean that improvements aren’t already being made. We’ve seen the magic Griffin Canning has brought to this rotation and now with Andrew Heaney back on board things are looking a little more solid than usual. That still leaves a couple of starting spots in need of consistency, but at the same time the Angels are trending towards a more stable rotation.

I gotta say, for the team that the Angels are fielding right now they are in a very favorable position to compete. The team keeps getting younger and younger as the season progresses and as they embrace the youth they’re finding a plethora of new talent to work with. I know that I say this time and time again, but this team requires a fair amount of patience and even more faith.

This Angels team will compete deep down the stretch as they shore up their weaknesses bit by bit. By the end of the season we’re going to see a completely different team than we did in the month of April.

And that team will be one capable to pushing the Angels into a much deserved playoff spot.

Wildin’ Out

This is where the Angels really need to turn on the after burners and go wild on the Seattle Mariners. The Angels are only 2.5 games back from the 2nd Wild Card spot and depending on how this series goes they could be nipping at the heels of that 2nd spot if not holding it to themselves.

This is a very important series for the Angels as this team has spent far too much time dawdling between competitive streaks and mediocrity. This is absolutely not a point in time for the Angels to slow down.

This series in Seattle can prove to be a turning point for the Angels season. A point where they can go from constantly coming up short competitively to showing they are a team in it for the long haul.

If the Angels falter in this series they’ll still have plenty of time to make up for whatever momentum they lose, but at the same time it’s getting a little too deep into the season for this time to wobble between being on and being off. What exactly can the Angels do to keep the fires hot?

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It’s always easier said than done, but consistent starting pitching is something that will take them, and keep them, over the top. Andrew Heaney just completed his first start of the season and pitched 5 innings of two run ball with 8 K’s against the Texas Rangers. That’s as fine a starting point for the rest of his season as any, now we just have to see a slight improvement on that and the Angels will be golden.

Even if he pitches just another 5 innings that would be great, but if we can see anywhere from 6-7 innings of the same quality that he showed in his last start the Angels will have no real reason to lose (even though they always find ways to drop winnable games).

Aside from Felix Pena, who has been as solid as you can ask for from a spot starter, Tyler Skaggs offers the most uncertainty going into this series. Is he going to be near-ace material? Is he going to falter and allow the Mariners to walk all over him?

The problem with Skaggs is his mental game; whatever is happening in his head is hurting him on the mound big time. I’m no sports psychologist but it seems to me that there is far too much pressure on Skaggs to perform beyond his best each and every start. It seems as if he views himself as the team ace and is struggling to live up to that position.

The fact of the matter is that Skaggs is not the team ace, maybe if the Angels had more talent to offer him comfort in his role then he could perform like an ace. But as of now it looks like the pressures getting to him.

With the intensity of this series, I just don’t know if he’ll put up a quality start on the mound. Maybe it’s the slight pessimism instilled in me by being a fan of this team, but with how up and down Skaggs has been I can’t put much confidence in him as of right now.

Griffin Canning is killing it though.

Shining All-Stars

This Angels team is packed with a few more All-Stars than most anticipated coming into this season. Of course we have the annual All-Star in Mike Trout who will likely make it to the festivities despite his down year so far.

Trout is only slashing .276/.449/.565, which is still really great, but also telling of just how good he is and how he isn’t living up to his best so far. It’s still early in the season and these numbers will even themselves out to career norms, if anything the Angels are lucky because this means he’s going to turn it up hard heading towards the 2nd half of the season.

While the Angels have been mostly mediocre in 2019 so far they’ve done a lot of their winning without relying too much on Trouts assistance. That’s actually a really good sign, this Angels team is still able to stay in a competitive zone even without massive contributions from the best player in baseball. Imagine how good this team will be when Trout starts playing up to his norm? Scratch that, imagine how good this team will be once Trout starts raising his ceiling with how good he is as he seems to do every season?

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On top of that we have the surprise All-Star in Tommy La Stella. It’s crazy to think how mostly everyone was crying for him to be DFA’ed just one week into the season in favor of David Fletcher and now we have both of them in the lineup and both of them killing it.

How did Tommy La Stella become the biggest offensive contributor for the Angels in 2019 so far? I guess when you try to take on as many reclamation projects as the Angels do eventually one of them is bound to pan out.

There is also shut-down reliever Ty Buttrey and his nasty 1.37 ERA in 28.1 IP. That elite ERA is supported by a killer 11.1 K/9 rate with just one homer allowed all season. The Angels bullpen has scuffled a bit as of late, but a series against the mediocre Mariners may prove to be what this ‘pen needs to get their legs back under them.

Buttrey anchoring the bullpen brings loads of confidence in the Angels ability to maintain a lead in the deeper innings, we just need to see the rest of the ‘pen rally around Buttrey and make sure the Angels can take home some much deserved wins.

The Three P’s of Baseball

Patience, patience, and more patience. The Angels are a microcosm of life at this point; despite how wonky things are looking we just have to have patience in the process and trust that the moving parts that are working for us currently will continue to work and take pressure off the shortcomings. Good things happen to those who are patient and believe.

I know it’s hard with this team sometimes because we all see the potential they have, we all see the team they should be. What makes it worse is we know exactly what is holding this team back and how to fix it, but those fixes will only come with time.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but this team has been getting better and better piece by piece as the season moves along. The key here is to recognize the slow, but steady improvements and trust that they will keep coming.

This Angels team is not the team that they are supposed to be and we’ve seen them shedding their false identity bit by bit; Justin Bour is no longer a key bat in this lineup, Zack Cozart is losing playing time to kids who deserve it far more like Luis Rengifo, and Matt Harvey/Trevor Cahill are slowly becoming less of a fixture in this rotation.

If Andrew Heaney can continue his strong comeback after going down before the season started with elbow issues this team will find themselves embracing more stability than they have all season. The fresh infusion of talent doesn’t end there; we still have prospect starting pitchers Jose Suarez and Patrick Sandoval to look forward too later in 2019.

We still have Shohei Ohtani figuring it all out all the plate. Keynan Middleton is still waiting in the wings. The improvements with this team are coming from all over; offense, starting pitching, bullpen, and defense.

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The only thing we can do now is be patient, trust the process, and have faith that the Angels won’t waste this opportunity to snatch a Wild Card spot. It should be an interesting, if not semi-hectic series against the Mariners, that in all likelihood can see the Angels coming out of the other side a more competitive team.

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