3 stats from the White Sox series that sum up the 2025 Angels

Coming out of their divisive trade deadline, the talk around this Angels team was all about staying competitive and playing meaningful games in August. Things did not start well, with two immediate losses to the Chicago White Sox before a dramatic, come from behind, walk-off win to salvage something from that series.

If that all feels very familiar, it should. Over those three games, three stats stand out as being perfectly aligned with how the 2025 season has gone thus far.

3 stats from the White Sox series that sum up the 2025 Angels

Outscored, if not outgunned

In the three-game set, the White Sox outscored the Angels 12-11. That’s a far closer line than the Angel’s season run differential of -67, but it also doesn’t tell the whole story. The Angels went 16 full innings without scoring at all, including the one-hit shutout in game 2, before Zach Neto came through in the 6th inning of game 3.  That middle game was the 7th time this year that the Angels have been shutout, as opposed to only keeping their opponents off the board 5 times.

The Angels have been outscored every month except for June, which, by no coincidence, is also the only month of the season where they’ve had a better than .500 record. Breaking out of that slump with a home run was also fitting. This is a team that has relied on the long ball all year. Across baseball, the Angels rank 5th in home runs, but 26th in total hits. When your leading slugger is as notoriously streaky as Taylor Ward, and when the team is also leading the majors with 1083 strikeouts, that’s a tough tightrope to walk.

Kenley Jansen has twice as many wins as Tyler Anderson

Kenley Jansen is now 4-2, with a 2.85 ERA. Oh, and he also has 20 saves, from 21 opportunities. The fact that he has had to pitch so often in the 9th inning with the game tied, in an effort to either give the lineup a chance to walk things off, or at the least throw the game to the whims of the extra-innings ghost runner, says everything both about this team, and the job Jansen has done for them.

Tyler Anderson has won two games all season, and the last of those was on April 18th. Jack Kochanowicz has three wins, and Yusei Kikuchi has four. Wins have basically become meaningless stats for starting pitchers, but the fact that only two members of the Angels rotation have more of them than their closer gives you some idea of what a knife-edge the team have been teetering on all season long.

A regular rollercoaster

Ward’s three-run blast in game three nailed down the Halos eighth walk-off win for the year, and also their 31st come-from-behind victory. However, they’ve also blown 31 leads, which feels about right if you’ve been watching them all season long. Sure, there is some crossover in those numbers – there are times when the Angels have taken a lead, blown it, and then come back to win – and they’re a respectable 20-13 in one-run games, but the point is watching this team is anything but relaxing.

The majority of their games haven’t felt over, one way or the other, until the handshakes start. In the first three innings of games, they’ve actually outscored opponents by 169-166, but in innings 4-6 that trend seriously flips, and they trail 152-203. Innings 7-9 are a slightly more even 143-166. The fact that they’ve been outscored so regularly, and yet are still only 4 games under .500, is remarkable. You can say a lot about the 2025 Angels, but they certainly aren’t boring.   

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