Angels' promotion of prospect with tragic history spoiled by weekend ineptitude

LA made one of the cooler minor roster moves one could make, but an ugly series against the Twins overshadowed it.

Eric Cole

Minnesota Twins v Los Angeles Angels / Jayne Kamin-Oncea/GettyImages

Over the weekend, one of the best feel-good stories for the Los Angeles Angels came to be as the team recalled Zac Kristofak to the big leagues. While not a top-ranked prospect, Kristofak's tragic story is well-known to many Angels' fans as his mother was murdered by his father, and his connection to fellow big leaguer Carter Kieboom's family kept him involved in baseball.

While Kristofak's call-up was heartwarming, the Angels didn't make the move to promote him as a form of charity. The Angels' bullpen has been one of the worst in baseball in 2024 and the hope was that Kristofak could give the team some much needed bullpen depth. Sadly, that was not to be as LA's pitching staff got destroyed by the Twins over the weekend.

Twins' weekend sweep of Angels was a team effort

No one guy can ever be responsible when a team gives up 32 runs over three games. To Kristofak's credit, he pitched well in his Sunday debut even if his defense didn't play well behind him in the eighth inning. For an Angels team whose bullpen has been used a lot AND has been getting torched, Kristofak giving them two quality innings in a blowout the first time he was under the bright lights is to be commended.

Unfortunately, his heroics could not overcome some truly horrific pitching from the Angels in the series. Jose Soriano couldn't even get through two innings over the weekend and even Reid Detmers got beat up on Sunday. As for the bullpen, they gave up 19 runs (although a couple were unearned) over the three-game series against Minnesota, which is impressive when you don't think about how sad it is.

While Kristofak can be a part of the solution going forward, this Angels' pitching staff is going to need a lot more help than that. Patrick Sandoval is going to have to start pulling his weight in the rotation and at least a couple of the Angels' relievers are going to have to figure out how to get outs. If not, 2024 could be a very, very long season.

For now, though Kristofak was sent back down to Triple-A, so fans are hoping he's back soon to help give this team a semblance of a new identity on the pitching staff side of things.

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Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.