LA Angels: 3 discouraging signs from Houston Astros series

The LA Angels are now 70-73 after dropping two of three to the Houston Astros.

They are now 10 games out of the playoffs, and you can kiss those hopes goodbye.

It was a disappointing series, but I didn’t expect much of a different outcome to be honest. There were three discouraging aspects from this series in general, and at this point it feels like I’m only watching for Shohei Ohtani, Jared Walsh, Jo Adell, and Brandon Marsh. This season isn’t fun anymore.

No. 3 discouraging sign for the LA Angels from the Houston Astros series: Blowing an early lead

In the first game of this series, the LA Angels were up two to nothing heading into the bottom of the third inning.

We then lost 5-10. When Ohtani homers in the second at-bat of the first game of a series against the AL West’s first-place team, we need to keep that momentum going.

We scored again in the second inning, and even when the Stros came back to make it a 2-3 ballgame in Houston’s favor, we took the lead in the top of the fourth.

The wheels fell off after that.

If the Angels could have kept fighting and won the game that they took initial command over, they would have set themselves up for a successful series. That momentum would absolutely carry over in the rest of the series. I mean, we won Game 2 even with no momentum.

A win in Game 1 would have been huge for not only the rest of the series, but even the rest of the season.

No. 1 discouraging sign for the LA Angels from the Houston Astros series: Shohei Ohtani is human after all

I recently did a TV interview with this Japanese media outlet about Shohei Ohtani.

In the interview, I said that “Shohei Ohtani is a superhero. He’s not a human; he’s a superhero.”

I wasn’t all that wrong, but I was proven a little bit wrong on Friday, where Ohtani very uncharacteristically struggled on the mound.

Entering Friday, Ohtani had posted a 6-0 record since the start of July with a 2.25 ERA and had surrendered just six walks and a .201 batting average.

On Friday, he went 3.1 innings, and gave up nine hits and six earned runs. He still didn’t walk anybody, so that was great, but a lot of guys were hitting off of him.

Ohtani is still a top five pitcher in the American League, but his start on Friday proved that he is capable of having a bad day, which we really haven’t seen much from him these days.

He’s still the AL MVP. Don’t worry about that. The team needs to step up in these last few weeks, however, to get potential free agents wanting to play with more than just our two MVPs, however.