Angels fans should riot after latest nauseating turn through the starting rotation

There could not possibly be a larger sample size on the five-man rotation of Yusei Kikuchi, José Soriano, Tyler Anderson, Kyle Hendricks and Jack Kochanowicz, and yet the Angels continue to ride these lame horses. The Angels have no starting pitcher prospects that they trust (what else is new?), and are subsequently wearing out their "frontline" starters. They technically have used a sixth and seventh starting pitcher this season when Ryan Zeferjahn and Brock Burke opened games, but those obviously were bullpen games. They used Caden Dana, Ryan Johnson, Sam Aldegheri and Víctor Mederos out of the bullpen, but never as starters. It's been the same group of five since Opening Day, and they are just not good enough to get the team over the hump.

Perry Minasian stated that he wants his core group of position players to experience important games in August and September, so they held onto their rentals after the trade deadline passed. However, the starting pitchers are going to lose games before Mike Trout, Taylor Ward, Zach Neto, Nolan Schanuel, Logan O'Hoppe, Christian Moore and Jo Adell even have a chance to compete. The hitters are great, and even the bullpen has its moments. The starters are holding this team back...and yes, the defense and baserunning too.

This rotation is exactly how the front office envisioned it during the offseason, and they have been awful all year. Well, the Angels have gone one time through the rotation after trading for three players, and their hand-picked five posted a 6.00 ERA, 5.09 FIP and 1.41 WHIP. Kikuchi (he's been great, no shade towards the ace) and Hendricks were very good in their starts post-deadline, but Anderson, Kochanowicz and Soriano all blew-up. The Soriano start against Tampa Bay was relatively anomalous, but still incredibly ugly -- he allowed a whopping seven runs in the 4th inning.

Replacing both Anderson and Kochanowicz would have been incredibly simple at the deadline, and yet the Angels christened this group of five after spring training and will not relent...despite optioning Kochanowicz down to the minors a couple weeks before and Anderson flat-out saying this after his dreadful outing against the Chicago White Sox, per Jeff Fletcher of The OC Register:

"'For sake of not wanting to sound like a broken record, I’ve got nothing,' Anderson said when reporters asked him to evaluate the game. 'Same (expletive) for 15 starts, so I don’t really have anything here.'"

Tyler Anderson

Since July 2nd, Kochanowicz and Anderson have made nine starts. Zero of them were quality. In that span they have a combined 6.55 ERA, 6.56 FIP and 1.74 WHIP. The Angels bought two cheap relievers and one incredibly cheap/glorified waiver claim position player to conclude July, yet are still going with their ineffective (to put it mildly) rotation here in August.

The Angels' front office staffers are just atrocious evaluators and developers. Rather than cheaply cashing in on even an average starting pitcher...or taking a chance on a prospect they've built up...the Angels are deciding to beat a dead horse with this five-man unit as a result of their ineptitude. Arte Moreno has refused to take a stance in timely fashion or beef up his sparse front office group for years, and it's certainly showing!

That failure to upgrade the fourth and fifth spots in the rotation is yet another indictment on Moreno, and this might cause him to fire his latest henchman in Minasian after the Angels miss the playoffs for the 11th straight year.

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