Mike Scioscia does this thing where he arbitrarily decides to throw away games. He does it 4-5 games every season, and although it's hard for a manager to really be responsible for a team's performance, it becomes clear in some games that the manager and team have mailed it in. From now on, look for the maileditin tag when games like this occur.
Now, as a general rule, if an offense doesn't score 5 runs, it's to blame for a loss. But tonight, frankly, Mike Scioscia was an idiot. Just a complete idiot. Let me rehash the disastrous 7th and 8th innings:
Jose Arredondo comes in to pitch for Too Many Pitches Weaver in the seventh. Having pitched yesterday, I thought this was a little weird. And it is. He threw 2 innings yesterday, 34 total pitches, only 18 strikes. Of course, he comes in today to face the order starting with Mark Ellis. He gives up a hit. Then comes Barton, a lefty. He walks him. Then, Chad Cliff Pennington, a switch hitter who hits righties at a .313 clip and lefties at a miserable .148. One. Forty. Eight. Pennginton gets a hit. Then Arredondo throws a wild pitch during Adam Kennedy's at bat to let in a run. Oh yeah, Kennedy's a lefty.
Like, are you serious? Does this team even know what scouting reports are? Arredondo was the wrong choice. Oliver was better. They both pitched yesterday. If you really don't want to throw Oliver out there, then at least try for Bulger. His BAA is .212 for lefties. Bulger unavailable? How aobut Matt Palmer? His platoon splits are pretty crappy, but he also didn't throw two innings yesterday. Who the hell is making these bullpen decisions? Mike Scioscia or Joe Torre?
It took me a grand total of 13 seconds to find this information. 13 seconds of Baseball Reference and Yahoo! Sports MLB is all it would've taken to prevent a loss tonight.
It's particularly aggravating when I get to go to 2 games a season and both of them get completely mailed in. My last game in Anaheim, Reggie Effing Willits started in right field. Mathis was the catcher. Gary Matthews Effing Junior was in left.
The Angels can't afford to keep throwing away games to bad teams. The Rangers are four games back, courtesy of an Angels team incapable of beating the only threat to their division title. They play the Rangers for a four game series to close out the season.
Wake the fuck up, Mike.
Miscellany:
- If people cared half as much about the country as they do about the flag, maybe they'd realize that defending the right of citizens to do whatever they want with a flag is more important than the flag itself. Everyone points to the flag being a symbol of America's freedom, yet fails to see the obvious hypocrisy with claiming it's wrong to express discontent with the flag through various destructive actions like flag burning. Which, by the way, isn't even what happened here. Ladies and gentlemen, your United States of America.
- This is insane. Jerry Jones built a screen that's clearly too low (by at least 15 feet) and the NFL goes "um, it's okay, you can just fix it next year." If I were the punter for the opposing team, I would punt the ball into that damn screen as many times as possible, taking re-dos until the game lasts 10 hours. The way the NFL treats the complete fuckup that is the Dallas Cowboys makes me retch. Not only that, what engineer signed off on this? It's not like the thing is interfering with only the highest punts. Backup punters are hitting it easily 10-15 feet before the peak of their kicks. Jones claims that this is less likely in a game situation because of "directional punting." I've got some news for you, Jerry, and it's called physics. Any punter kicking from the hash marks is going to hit the apex of their punt half way to the destination in both axes. In other words, it doesn't matter where they're kicking the ball...it's going to travel under that scoreboard every time.
- The fires around LA are pretty cool at night...you can see the flames ring around the mountain.
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