Game 1: Angels 13, Yankees 1 | Game 2: Yankees 4, Angels 3 | Game 3: Yankees 3, Angels 2
Runs Scored: 18
Runs Against: 8
YTD Record: 11-13 | 3rd in AL West
For the second time on their three-stop road trip, the Angels suffered the misfortune of outscoring their opponent but losing the series. Following Friday’s blowout win—the largest for the Halos ever in the Bronx—the club looked to be in good position to come out ahead in the series and arrive home with a high probability of finishing the month above .500. Instead, they found themselves on the wrong end of a pair of nail-biters—dropping them to 2-7 in one-run games on the year—and now must sweep Cleveland in order to avoid their third consecutive losing April. Those looking for optimism can take heart in the team’s +29 run differential and MLB-best 114 wRC+, which portend better things to come.
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Game 1: Smashing Pumpkins
*So many dingers. The Halos launched four home runs Friday night, giving C.J. Wilson his third blowout victory (and third overall win) of the season. The third and fourth jacks of the night—coming back-to-back from Erick Aybar and Collin Cowgill, of all people—tied, then broke the franchise record for home runs in the first month of the season, which was 34. With single homers added Saturday and Sunday, the club now sits at 37 on the year. There’s no way they’ll come close to the all-time franchise record of 50 this month, but they can become just the 16th Angels club to eclipse 40 in a month if they can tally three more in the three-game set against Cleveland. Seems doable.
*After showing signs of life in D.C., Erick Aybar fully emerged from his early-season funk on Friday, notching the 10th four-hit game of his career. He cooled off some over the final two games in the Bronx, but is still 12-for-25 with 5 XBHs in his last six contests and has raised his batting average nearly 100 points. Fun side note: Aybar, who made a point of taking more pitches this spring, doesn’t have a single walk over his hot stretch.
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Game 2: Melancholy
*This was, without a doubt, the most painless loss of the season. It wasn’t entirely pain-free, mind you, because Hector Santiago, it just wasn’t encumbered by the usual sense of utter devastation. Perhaps the biggest reason for the lack of ulcers was the bullpen demonstrating something resembling competence. Four Angels relievers combined for 3 ⅔ scoreless innings (with no walks!), no doubt to lull us into a false sense of security for Sunday’s game.
The Halos got the tying run to second base in each of the final three frames, but couldn’t quite muster that one clutch hit to knot the game. That sort of thing is to be expected every now and again over the course of a long season—hitting with RISP is not a repeatable skill—which, for me, is another factor that makes the loss a little easier to stomach. That being said, it would be nice if the Halos could add a few more timely hits as a complement to their homer-happy ways. The club is currently batting .222/.314/.376 with runners in scoring position, which is right about league average but well below the team’s overall .253/.317/.448 slash line. If/when the Angels’ RISP numbers start resembling their numbers in other situations, they could/will become even more of an offensive juggernaut, meaning more of those close games could/will end up going the team’s way.
*Mike Trout is maintaining his strange proclivity for first-inning home runs. His 400-ft oppo taco off of Vidal Nuno on Saturday was his fifth 1st-inning dinger of the year and the 14th of his last 19 regular-season homers total. Also, continuing on a theme from the last series recap, it was just his second extra-base hit to the opposite field this season.
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Game 3: Infinite Sadness
*It seems these Angels can’t go more than a couple games without finding a new way to lose in devastating fashion. Sunday night’s loss had a familiar ring to it—The bullpen walked a bunch of people? You don’t say!—but there was something of a variation on the all-too-common bLOLpen theme: the inclusion of the apparent failure of Chris Iannetta’s magical contact lenses.
Oops.
This is one of those plays that’s simply terrible timing. I guarantee Iannetta catches that pitch 999 times out of 1,000, but it just so happened that that one time came in a crucial situation late in the game. The drop, which Iannetta called “one of the dumbest plays [he's] made in [his] career,” eventually cost the Halos the game, but not before Iannetta flubbed an opportunity that could have saved his and the bullpen’s neck.
After the passed ball moved the runners to second and third, Nick Maronde worked Brian McCann to 1-2 with a swing-and-miss on some high heat. Iannetta couldn’t quite hang on to a foul tip on the next pitch, McCann fouled off another, and then this happened:
What might have been…
For reasons unknown, rather than focus on securing what could (and probably should) have been a foul-tipped strike three, Iannetta decided to make a run at throwing down to third base. This is the same third base that was occupied by Jacoby Ellsbury, i.e. one of the best baserunners in the game, who’s been picked off straight-up a grand total of three times in seven-plus seasons. There’s no knowing what would’ve happened next had Iannetta held onto that ball, but the chance Maronde still throws a 54-foot curveball on the subsequent (wild) pitch is probably pretty slim. I’ll admit griping about dropped foul tips is damn nit-picky, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s no way to defend Iannetta even making the attempt to throw behind the runner at third in a tie game. The opportunity for disaster there is massive, and the chance for reward is almost nil.
Speaking of Chris Iannetta and defense… when I wrote earlier this month about what an optimal Iannetta/Hank Conger platoon might look like, I purposefully omitted any discussion of catcher defense because it added a wrinkle of complexity to the exercise that I didn’t feel like tackling at the time. Now that Iannetta’s sub-par receiving has led directly to a loss, though, I suppose it’s time to address it. Iannetta is about average when it comes to blocking pitches in the dirt, but was among the worst framers in the league during his time in Colorado, and he has not improved upon the skill any under the tutelage of Mike Scioscia. (In fact, if you believe Baseball Prospectus’s numbers, he’s actually gotten slightly worse at it since arriving in Anaheim.) Iannetta has accumulated -80 framing runs1 since 2008—the furthest back as BP’s data goes—which is the third-worst total in baseball over that span, behind only Atlanta’s hapless tandem of Ryan Doumit and Gerald Laird.
In order to counteract Iannetta’s extreme deficiency in framing ability, the Angels would need to employ a second catcher who’d end up at the opposite end of the spectrum. Luckily, Hank Conger is just that guy. Conger effectively canceled out Iannetta’s sloppy glovework behind the dish last season despite having half the chances of his platoon-mate, turning in a positive 15.2 framing runs to Iannetta’s negative 15.5. It’s the same story so far this season—Conger: +1.2, Iannetta: -1.1—which is fine if you’re good with merely league-average framing, but one could make the argument that the Angels might be better off using Conger as a defensive replacement late in games.
It’s no secret that the pitching staff has had trouble throwing strikes this year. Why not, then, in late-and-close scenarios, when every ball or strike has a larger effect on the game’s outcome, put in the catcher most likely to get those borderline pitches? Iannetta’s tendency to stab at the ball and/or push it out of the zone is most evident on pitches that miss his initial target, as you’d probably expect:
From the catcher’s perspective…
Iannetta knows it was a good pitch—he wouldn’t have frozen upon catching it if he didn’t—but his big movements leading up to the moment it hits his glove keep the umpire from ringing up Bryce Harper.
I wish I could upload an exact replica of that pitch from Smith with Conger catching, but there’s really not much to cull from. The best I could find was a slider that catches a bit more of the plate, but still forces Conger to adjust away from his glove side:
Notice how while Iannetta’s entire body tends to move along with the pitch as the ball approaches the plate, Conger remains still until the moment he reaches for the pitch, and even then moves only his arm. This is a big reason why Conger is among the league leaders in framing and Iannetta is… uhh… not. Umpires do their best to not be influenced by a catcher’s actions, but they’re only human. If a catcher’s making a ruckus behind the dish as a pitch comes in—making the offering not look like a strike—then it’s probably not going to be a strike.
Those extra (and/or expected) strikes would come in mighty handy with the game on the line in the late innings. If the Angels have the opportunity to go with Conger in those situations, why not take it?
*Garrett Richards pitched incredibly well for the fourth time in five starts this year, but again did so while playing with fire. The right-hander managed to walk just two batters on the night, tying a season low, but threw first-pitch strikes to only 9 of the 27 batters he faced, dropping his overall rate2 to a league-worst 43.7%. He’s been able to keep hitters at bay for now on the strength of his stuff and an extremely friendly BABIP (.195), but if he can’t figure out how to consistently get strike one, eventually he’s going to get burned.
*The Angels weren’t exactly successful in their first go against Masahiro Tanaka, but they may have unwittingly uncovered the key to taking him down: attacking early in the count. Three of the Halos’ four legitimate hits—Kendrick’s triple should have been an error on Ichiro—came on the first pitch, and the fourth came on a 1-0 count. Once Tanaka got ahead in the count, just the thought of his deadly splitter made him virtually unhittable—something that has been true in all five of his starts thus far. Batters typically hit poorly when behind in the count, but not to the degree that Tanaka has achieved: the league is hitting a paltry .066/.113/.092 with two strikes against the Yankees rookie, vs. .181/.257/.269 against the rest of the AL. Take note, future Tanaka opponents: If you get a pitch to hit early in the count, take a hack at it. Easier said than done, obviously, but it’s at least worth a try because you’re screwed otherwise.
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1 In more general terms, he’s caught 597 fewer called strikes than the average catcher would have with the same number of chances. This includes pitches outside the zone that are called strikes and pitches in the zone that are called balls, the latter of which are Iannetta’s bugaboo.
2 Angels starters now make up four of the bottom six spots for first-strike percentage among qualified starters. That is not company they want to be keeping.