Winning Record At Home!
WoW! It took 76 games but the Angels finally have a winning record at home. 20–19 isn’t too bad, I suppose, but I’m sure they wanted it to be better by this point of the season. Couple that home record with the overall record of 41–35 and the team surely thought they’d be better at this point than 8 1/2 games back. Regardless, they won Friday’s game and are on a 3 game win streak…woohoo!
Heaney wins the Pitchers Duel
Giving up a single run through 7 solid innings, Andrew Heaney picked up his 4th victory of the year to put him at 4–5 on the season. He only struck out 4 and gave up 9 hits and the offense only backed him up with 2 runs but it was enough. He pitched real well and the defense helped him out too even though there was an error. This is exactly the kind of outting the team needs from it’s starters. With so many injuries to both the rotation and the bullpen a strong performance like this from Heaney is definitely a nice treat.
On the offensive side of things, The team only managed 3 hits but Upton, Pujols, and Valbuena managed to turn those meager rations into a winning formula. In the first inning, Upton drew a walk from Estrada and Albert smacked a double to left which gave Upton all he needed to score from 1st base. Valbuena followed up with a single to right which knocked in Pujols. That was it…no more scoring…and Albert was the only Angel able to pick up a hit the rest of the game. I’m hoping the offense does a bit more in the upcoming games but Estrada pitched pretty well for the Blue Jays.
I’m gonna give my Player of the Game to Andrew Heaney since he held Toronto to a single run and was able to make the 2 runs the offense spotted him, hold up. He truly was a present as the Angels were celebrating some kind of Christmas in June thing and the Angels could do with many more of the pitching presents he gave them yesterday.
The win coupled with losses by Houston and Seattle leaves the Angels 8 1/2 behind the Astros and 3 1/2 behind Seattle in the AL West. Seattle’s also the 2nd wild card team right now so my team needs to pick up some more ground before they’re lined up for the playoffs. Sure it’s not even the All-Star Break but it’s never too early to start pushing to make the post season.
Today, the Angels and Blue Jays continue their 4 game matchup with Jaime Barria (5–2, 3.57 ERA) going for the Angels and right-hander Marcus Stroman (0–5, 7.71 ERA) on the mound for Toronto. Hopefully things will work out better for Barria this time around than last time when he choked up 6 runs in 4 innings against the Diamondbacks.
Daily Ramble 274.2 | Sports – Angels – Winning Record At Home!