Long Reliever Makes a Decent Starter

Felix Pena keeps doing his best to be a starter. Even though he’s primarily been a reliever, even a long reliever in his MLB career, he did start some games in the minors a few years ago. With the Angels’ rotation all having Tommy John surgery he’s been forced into being a starter and he’s doing pretty well. Yesterday he gave up 2 runs over 6 innings but since the offense didn’t support him, he took the loss. Overall though, he’s 1–1 with a 2.73 ERA in his 6 starts and has been a nice filler. If only the offense provided more consistency…but then the whole Angels’ season is full of ‘if onlys’.

Bad Umpiring Again

In any case Felix gets my Player of the Game today in the losing effort which featured a no hitter by Chicago starter Carlos Rodón for the first 6 innings. Those no hit innings coupled with the measly 2 runs the Angels could put together means that Chicago is guaranteed at lease a split in the 4 game series. And in drove the Angels 2 game sunder .500.

The Angels were able to put together a few hits…4 in fact, and they led to 2 runs which wasn’t close to the support needed for the bullpen to hold on to. Kinsler end up with 2 hits and Fletcher and Simmons both went 1 for 3 but other than that the offense was flat again. Chicago continued it’s pitching around Trout by issuing him 2 walks but he also struck out twice on the night.

In all, the game can probably be summed up by the horrible call at first base in the 8th. With Garcia on at first base, Tim Anderson dropped a bloop single into right field. As the throw came in to keep Garcia at third, it was cut off and Simmons gunned it to 1st where it looked like Anderson made it back to the base. He slides off it though and you can clearly see that Jefry Marte places his glove on Anderson’s back. He should have been out. The replay clearly shows that he was out but the ump made a bad call.

I’m not really sure what’s going on this season but it certainly seems like there are more bad calls this year than I have ever seen in baseball. I think perhaps the umpires are relying on instant replay to fix any mistakes they may make and when a team is outta challenges the umps get even lazier since they no longer can be second guessed. In any case it’s really bad this year.

Daily Ramble 306.1 | Sports – Angels – Long Reliever Makes a Decent Starter