Friday, September 16th 2011, finds your Los Angeles Angels queued up for a three spot against the Camden Ortolan's. Although the birdland fowls are out of contention, which is a surprise to no one, they can easily serve this team and its sporadic offense a serving of spoiler pie if the balls don't drop in our favor. Or if Fernando Rodney pitches.
Fortunately, our season-long strength in the starting rotation area should serve us well in this series. Dirty Dan Haren is leading the sweep with a slated start time of 4:05pm PDT.
Game 1
We have Dan Haren going for his career high tying 16th win against the bloated lone star cast off Tommy Hunter. Hunter hasn't had much success this year and is currently sporting a 5.32 ERA. Batters are hitting .286 off him.
Haren has posted a 3.06 ERA this season garnished with a 1.01 WHIP. In 217.1 innings pitched, he's walked five people including one IBB. This guy is going to eat bar-barbecued Oriole for dinner, then ask for seconds.
Advantage: The Rebel Forces.
Game 2
Ervin Santana is slated to face Baltimore upstart Zach Britton. In his inaugural season, Britton's posted a 9-10 record with a 4.43 ERA. He also has 54 BB's to 87 K's in 138 innings of work. Britton's SIERA is only 25 points off his ERA so we can't tag bad Orioles defense for how inconsistent he's been although his BABIP of .308 should smooth out eventually.
Black Magic has a .500 record but at least it's nuanced by a respectable 3.30 ERA. His overall numbers are nothing to write home about but he's a solidly consistent piece in our rotation. His home and away numbers are very similar so that's definitely reassuring. He's given up eight earned runs is his last three starts so as long as our offense can put up a few good innings there's no reason we shouldn't take this game as well.
Advantage: The Rebel Forces of California of Orange County.
Game 3
Game three will feature TBD facing Alfredo Simon. Simon is pretty terrible (4-8, 4.67 ERA) and I've never heard or our pitcher TBD. I'm assuming he's a September 40-man roster addition from Orem. The birds haven't seen his stuff yet so you never know. Nevertheless, anyone with the last name of Simon is by definition, beatable in all senses of the word
Advantage: Anyone that's not a Rangers fan.
We have a big seven game road trip ahead of us and we need to win big. Doing anything less will negate any aspirations of a defining three game home stand with the toothless hee-haws, and also abate any wishful thinking of creeping into the wild card spot.
Go Halos!