Shohei Ohtani: Start delayed due to traffic on Bay Bridge

Shohei Ohtani was schedule to make his seventh start on the mound for the LA Angels today.

Instead, Shohei Ohtani was not able to make it to the ballpark in time to complete his preparation process. The reason may suggest that the baseball Gods have something against the LA Angels.

There was an accident on the Bay Bridge, so Ohtani had to ride the BART to get to the stadium. The BART is the ‘Bay Area Rapid Transit.’ It had Ohtani arriving too late to complete his warm-up, and both Kurt Suzuki and Phil Gosselin also had to take the BART. That is the reason they are now not playing today.

There was a transfer issue at the BART as well, which put the nail in the coffin on the original plans for those three.

Ohtani will still be hitting as the DH tonight. Gosselin was originally supposed to handle those duties, but this whole situation has deep effects on what is going on in this game. Patrick Sandoval will be starting on the mound while Ohtani will be batting second.

Sandoval has started two games this year, and sports a 4.96 ERA. Ohtani has a 2.37 ERA in his six starts. It’ll be a downgrade, but Ohtani will at least start on the bump tomorrow.

Drew Butera will take over for Suzuki tonight. He has somehow found a way to hit worse than Suzuki this year, so that’s another downgrade.

The Angels really can’t catch any breaks this season. Anthony Rendon has had his injuries, Mike Trout is out for an extended period of time, and now the higher powers of the baseball universe won’t even allow their players to get to the games on time.

Just when the Angels hop on a nice winning streak, and have their best pitcher starting for them, something completely out of their control has to mount more problems coming into the series for the squad. It’s been a common theme of the season so far.