Anaheim Angels Year in Review

by salb918 on Dec 5, 2025 9:14 AM PST

Beyond the Boxscore, one of your sister SBNation sites, is doing team reviews and I have just completed the Oakland/Anaheim joint team review:

Read it here

I think Angel fans will find this interesting, as I address the Pythagorean records of both teams and show some benefical run distributions on Anaheim's part.

Snippets:

The story with the Angels was their pitching: a deep rotation, featuring four starters with an ERA under 4.00 without anybody posting absurdly low BABIPs. John Lackey (3.66 RA) broke out in a big way, striking out one out of every five batters he faced and allowing only 13 home runs all year, down from 22 the year before. Jarrod Washburn (3.35 RA) also cut his home run rate and continued to induce groundballs as he did in 2004. Big Bartolo Colon, while not even close to being the best pitcher in the AL, managed to get his RA (3.76) to more closely reflect is weight. Scot Shields (9.6 K/9), Frankie Rodriguez (12.2 K/9), and Kelvim Escobar (9.5 K/9) anchored a spectacular strikeout bullpen to round out the pitching. An above-average defense, as measured by Baseball Prospectus' defensive efficiency (.702), rounded out the run-prevention unit. The Angels scored runs in line with the Weibull distribution, with the notable exception that they scored three runs in a game more often than expected. On the other hand, their run prevention unit did not give up two, three, four, or five runs with nearly the frequency expected. These are the most important runs in a game, and the Angels' ability to suppress these runs was a key in their outperforming their Pythagorean projection. The fact that the Angels matched or exceeded the model in this region on the run production side only helps matters. Indeed, when scoring fewer than five runs, the Angels were a respectable 32-55. An average team would win only a quarter of such games. The offense was just good enough to get enough runs to win, and the Angels' stellar pitching did the rest. Hope you enjoy it...questions and comments always welcome. You can do so in this diary, although it's much cooler to make a BtB account and post there! Part 2 of this article comes out tomorrow.

This Fan-Post is authored by an independent fan. Tell us what you think and how you feel.

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Comments

Small critique...

I wouldn't say Escobar anchored the bullpen. He was a starter, got hurt for practically the entire season, came back like, hmm, last month or two months? By then Santana was firmly entrenched in the starting rotation. Escobar was "weened" back, and was eventually just left in the bullpen.

Shields, however, was a big anchor, along with Frankie. Shields was getting overused, however, and it started to show (i.e. that one road trip to tornoto and NY where the bullpen collapsed). Escobar kinda saved the day when he came back as he helped give Shields, and even Frankie, some well deserved rest.

by Angels101 on Dec 8, 2025 8:58 PM PST reply actions

Oh, FYI

I meant to add you are correct that Shields & Frankie anchored it...I just have trouble saying Escobar did it cuz he pitched in like only 1/4 of the games, but thats just me nit picking.

by Angels101 on Dec 8, 2025 9:01 PM PST reply actions

Fair enough.

Thanks.

Wasn't a major part of the review anyway. What did you think about the rest of it?

by salb918 on Dec 9, 2025 6:34 AM PST up reply actions

Was good summary

I think you hit the major points: Solid pitching, good D, punch & judy offense for the most part. Your note on the 5 run mark is interesting because I always felt if the opposition scored 5 or more we were in a bit of trouble...4 or less, we had a shot.

Small editing nitpick (as if I write and spell correctly all the time, which im <--- too lazy to do!)...when discussing Colon I would say his weight. (it says "is weight").

BTW, I always wondered if there was a direct correlation between the fact we had Cabrera at SS and pretty much the entire pitching staff enjoying a better year than the year before...any way to numerically figure that one out?

by Angels101 on Dec 9, 2025 8:16 AM PST reply actions