Angels committed a cardinal baseball sin in back-to-back losses to Guardians

Very often, it isn't that a team loses a game that bothers fans as much as how games are lost. It is one thing to just get beaten by a better team, but it is another thing entirely to make blunders that prove costly or be particularly pathetic at a fundamental tenet of baseball. Being in that group is a great way to get fans riled up in all the wrong ways, and unfortunately, the Los Angeles Angels find themselves in exactly that position.

The Angels dropped the first two games of their series against the Guardians for a number of reasons. The bullpen game LA tried on Monday proved to be a disastrous choice, Zach Neto has been a non-factor (until he homered in the third game, anyway), and the bottom of the lineup has been an adventure.

However, the biggest reason why the Angels dropped the first two games of the Cleveland series is that when they had runners on base, they failed to cash in on those opportunities more often than not.

The Angels are simply leaving too many men on base to consistently win games right now

Sometimes, a team's problem is just that simple. Sure, it wasn't likely that the Angels were going to win the first game, as outscoring seven runs from the Guardians is a tough bar to clear. However, the other game was close, and the Angels left a combined 21 runners on base over those first two games. They outhit the Guardians 17-11 and have zero wins to show for the effort.

This is not an isolated problem. So far this season, the Angels have been leaving, on average, 7.12 batters on base per game, which is in the bottom half of the league already. For those with basic math skills out there, clearly the Angels have decided to "pick up the pace" and have left 10.5 runners on base a game during those two losses.

So yes, there are issues that need to be fixed at the granular level, and yes, leaving runners on base may be more of a major symptom than the root cause. However, what it DOES tell us is that the Angels' lineup isn't consistent enough. Even if they have a couple of guys having good games, that doesn't mean much unless the hitters around them do their jobs. Sadly, with the Angels, they have not.

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