Contenders or Pretenders

[Angel Oracle]

54 minutes ago, Lou said:

M's strength of schedule to date = 27

M's remaining strength of schedule = 1 

M's until now = the Halos for the first 16 games.

M's going forward = the Halos over the past 44 games????

[jordan]

Angels play Seattle 9 times in the next 34 games.  If Angels are contenders, they will have the chance to show everyone that they are for real.  Would be nice if Angels can win 6 out of 9. 

[Angel Oracle]

1 hour ago, The Boogie Man said:

Remember when our starters averaged the least amount of innings in the league?  We are slightly above league average now.  

Closing in on 6 innings per start since April 29 (33 games, 191 innings), while putting up the 2nd best AL ERA (2.59) for starting pitching since then

[tdawg87]

1 hour ago, Angel Oracle said:

Good point, but 44 games is a pretty large sample size (granted a lot of good pitching faced after facing crap pitching for the first 16 games). 

It's a large sample size in which Calhoun has been the worst hitter in baseball, Kinsler was awful, Upton was struggling, Pujols, etc...

Overall this is a good offense. They need to improve for sure but I believe they will.

The biggest issue has always been the bullpen. People keep bringing up the offense and even blaming it for the bullpen's struggles but the fact of the matter is, the Angels lead the majors in blown saves. How many of those have turned into losses? 5? 6? More? 

Every closer blows saves and every bullpen blows up, but the Angels have done this more than any other team in baseball. If they had even an average amount of blown saves they'd be maybe 2.5 games out.

[nando714]

2 hours ago, Lou said:

why is everyone talking about the M's? The AL West race is over 

 

 

 

Astros will lay the smack down on the M’s this week and show them who runs the west

[TroutAdell]

This tram has too many holes to contend unless Upton, Pujols, Cozart Ohtani start to hit. The offense has been horrendous outside Trout and Simmons. The pen is awful in high leverage situations and Scoscia has no ability to motivate this squad. Trading young talent for an outside chance of playing the Yankees or Red Sox in a one game playoff doesn’t warrant trading the best prospects now.

[Angel Oracle]

49 minutes ago, TroutTrumbo said:

This tram has too many holes to contend unless Upton, Pujols, Cozart Ohtani start to hit. The offense has been horrendous outside Trout and Simmons. The pen is awful in high leverage situations and Scoscia has no ability to motivate this squad. Trading young talent for an outside chance of playing the Yankees or Red Sox in a one game playoff doesn’t warrant trading the best prospects now.

Ohtani is only struggling to hit LHP.   He's still hitting RHP very well.    The pen is the biggest concern, although it would help if the offense found some of what it had for those first 16 games. 

[Farmbuildingfan]

8 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

They're averaging 4.57 runs per game.

Average only tells part of the story, if a team scores   12, 3, 1, 0, 11, 2, 2, 3, 1, and 10  runs over 10 games, they are averaging 4.5 runs a game, but will probably have a 3-7 or 4-6 record over that span.

[tdawg87]

2 minutes ago, Farmbuildingfan said:

Average only tells part of the story, if a team scores   12, 3, 1, 0, 11, 2, 2, 3, 1, and 10  runs over 10 games, they are averaging 4.5 runs a game, but will probably have a 3-7 or 4-6 record over that span.

Well yes over a 10 game sample size that's true. 

[Farmbuildingfan]

I haven't recorded the score of any games, but the offense seems to explode about once a week, hence inflating their runs per game average.

[tdawg87]

I don't know why everybody keeps getting stuck on the offense. It's not great, but it isn't the reason we are 5.5 games out.

[Angel Oracle]

The offense AND bullpen both get the main attention for the 20-25 record since the 13-3 start.

Now that the schedule is softening up some, take advantage of it.

[jordan]

On 6/4/2018 at 2:50 PM, nando714 said:

Astros will lay the smack down on the M’s this week and show them who runs the west

Lol

[nando714]

55 minutes ago, jordan said:

Lol

F me , right 

jerrys boys look legit 

[Taylor]

We took 2 of 3 from the Astros in Houston last month.

[Lou]

On June 4, 2018 at 12:50 PM, nando714 said:

Astros will lay the smack down on the M’s this week and show them who runs the west

I agree 

[BackUpTheTruck]

On 6/4/2018 at 12:57 AM, BackUpTheTruck said:

We play 12 more games vs. Seattle before the deadline. We gain 4 games on them if we go 8-4. We gain 6 games if we go 9-3. 

Seattle is off tomorrow, and then play Houston Tuesday and Wednesday. I think Seattle loses both games. We play the Royal Screw Ups Monday through Wednesday. I will be conservative and say we win Monday and Wednesday. That puts us at 4 games back.

After this week, Seattle will go through a stretch mid-June where they play BOS/NYY 10 times in a row. We play the Red Sox 3 times at Fenway.

Before the deadline, we play Houston 3 times and they play Houston twice on July 30 and 31.

The way I see it, if we go 5-7 vs. Seattle, or worse, and the bullpen blows easy wins vs. BAL, CWS, TOR, OAK, then we will be more than 5 games back, and we are pretenders.

If we at least go 7-5 vs. Seattle, gaining 2 games, and the Angels take care of business winning games they should win, then we are contenders, and we trade for bullpen help.

Based on what I saw from the Minnesota series and games like Saturday where Parker and Alvarez can't get the job done, I say we are pretenders.

Wishful thinking followed by some common sense.

[Angel Oracle]

To paraphrase a 1950’s song:

They are the Great Pretenders!