ANAHEIM — After starting the season with two miserable months, the Angels have spent the past two months alternating between showing you what they could be, and why they still aren’t.
Since June 3, the Angels have gone 31-31 over more than one-third of the season. Playing .500 ball is nothing to celebrate, but after playing .356 ball for the first two months, it’s something.
“When we left spring training, our goal was just to get better every month,” Angels manager Ron Washington said.
Those last 62 games have been puzzling, because at times the Angels have looked very good and at times they’ve looked very bad, roughly correlating with the caliber of the opponent.
In that stretch they’ve gone 13-3 against the Seattle Mariners, New York Yankees, New York Mets and San Diego Padres. All four of those teams are in the playoff race.
During that same stretch, they’ve gone 3-13 against three of baseball’s last-place teams, the Oakland A’s, Colorado Rockies and Toronto Blue Jays.
“That’s what immature kids do,” Washington said. “And I don’t mean that in a vicious way. But that’s what immature kids do. And we’re fighting that every day. Until it becomes part of them, you’re going to have to fight it.”
Veteran reliever Hunter Strickland also acknowledged that the Angels have not been able to maintain the level they have shown they can reach.
“We can play with anybody,” Strickland said. “But the name of the game is consistency. We definitely have to be better at that. Take it series by series and game by game.”
In late June, the Angels won six straight games, and then immediately lost eight of their next nine.
If the Angels can figure out how to play consistently, they still have a chance to finish strong, which could give them reason for optimism going into next season.
“The amount of growth and maturity I’ve seen, I would tell you I’m optimistic for the future,” veteran outfielder Kevin Pillar said. “Obviously, there is still some work to be done in terms of just acquiring talent and depth in this organization. But a lot of guys have been put in positions this year before they were ready, because of (Anthony Rendon) and (Mike Trout) being out. They had to carry a little bit more of the load than maybe they anticipated. But that’s going to pay off in the future.”
The way the Angels have played over these past two months has been the classic glass-half-full situation.
Analyzing it requires some nuance, starting with the fact that even though they’ve been .500 over the past 62 games, they have a negative-57 run differential in that span. They’ve gone 11-7 in one-run games during that time.
Part of the reason for that is the improvement of the bullpen. The Angels’ bullpen has a 3.58 ERA since June 3, which ranks eighth in the majors. It’s been 2.52 ERA since Jun 17, which is second.
The caveat to that is that two of the main relievers who helped them achieve that – Carlos Estévez and Luis Garcia – have since been traded. On the bright side, the Angels have discovered their closer of the future, in Ben Joyce.
The starting pitching also hasn’t really improved over the last two months. Angels starters had a 4.52 ERA on June 2, and it’s been 5.07 since.
Within that, though, is the steady performance of 25-year-old José Soriano, who has a 3.36 ERA in his first season as a starter. His performance is certainly the most positive development for the pitching staff.
Offensively, the Angels’ young core is blossoming together.
Since the Angels began playing better on June 3, Nolan Schanuel has a .770 OPS, Zach Neto has an .877 OPS and Logan O’Hoppe has an .836 OPS. Neto (.897 since July 6) has been even hotter lately.
You can even add outfielders Jo Adell (.839 OPS since July 12) and Mickey Moniak (.775 OPS since June 8) into that mix.
Overall, though, the offense ranks 29th with a .673 OPS during the .500 stretch. It’s been poor because of the absence of Trout and Luis Rengifo, slumps from players like Taylor Ward and Brandon Drury.
In order to have a good offense next season, the Angels need the young players to keep doing what they’re doing, while hoping for better health from Rengifo, Trout and Rendon, and a return to form for Ward.
“You put someone like Trouty in the middle of the lineup, everyone automatically gets better,” Pillar said. “Everyone’s game is elevated. You know, the attention is so heavily on him that sometimes you tend to get some better pitches to hit, because the focus goes so much on a guy like that.”
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They won’t be getting Trout back until next season, so the Angels have another six weeks to get better in his absence.
They’ll need Neto, Schanuel, O’Hoppe, Adell and Moniak to all keep on their current trajectories while finding some pitchers who can contribute. Left-hander Reid Detmers, who has been languishing in Triple-A because of his inability to rediscover his peak form, is at the top of the list of pitching projects. Detmers is one of the most talented pitchers in the Angels’ system, and he hasn’t pitched an inning in the majors during this entire 61-game stretch.
Those are all pieces of what the Angels need to do to fill the other half of the glass.
“What we have to do is just continue to play baseball and continue to learn from the things that don’t go right, continue to learn from the things that we could have done better,” Washington said. “And quit talking about about what we could have done better. Start doing it. When the game presents that, start doing better. That is going to happen. I have no doubt about it.”
UP NEXT
Braves (TBA) at Angels (RHP José Soriano, 6-7, 3.36), Friday, 6:38 p.m., Bally Sports West, 830 AM
Angels relief pitcher Ben Joyce, right, and catcher Logan O’Hoppe celebrate after the final out of the ninth inning of a victory over the Detroit Tigers on June 27 at Angel Stadium. Both players are part of a young core the Angels hope will develop together to help turn around the fate of the franchise. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images)
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