3 Angels who’ve exceeded expectations after 50 games, 3 who’ve fallen short

LA Angels pitcher Reid Detmers has fallen short of expectations

Every Reid Detmers start feels like Groundhog Day. They start and finish the exact same way.

Detmers gets off to fantastic starts. He locates his pitches and gets a ton of swings and misses. Then, as the start goes on, he starts to lose command of the strike zone and he has trouble lasting in games.

Let's look at his last start against the Twins. Through the first five innings of that start he had racked up ten strikeouts. He walked two but allowed no hits against the first place Twins. The potential is there, it always has been.

In the sixth Detmers even struck out the first two batters to start the inning to give him 12 on the day. Unfortunately, a walk and two singles later saw the end of his night. Jimmy Herget allowed his first batter to hit a two-run double, and before you know it, what once was a 3-0 Angels lead was 3-3 in an eyeblink.

In innings 1-3 Detmers has a 2.25 ERA. In innings 4-6, he has an 8.82 ERA. The same thing happens virtually every start, and it's frustrating.

Many predicted an all-star jump for Detmers. We've seen flashes of that brilliance, but he has not put it together. A 4.87 ERA while only completing six innings once in eight starts is falling short of expectations.