Down 2-0 Early, Angels Rally To An Exciting 2-1 Loss

It's come to the point where if the Angels fall behind by a run or two, you might as well change the channel, because you've already seen this show before. Albert Pujols will play fielding practice with the shortstop. Mike Trout will get stranded on base a few times. Some combination of lousy relievers will cause trouble and then maybe get out of it. The only thing missing was a meaningless late-inning home run courtesy of Vernon Wells.

Jerome Williams threw junk all night and walked an unhealthy number of batters, but it was just good enough to limit the toothless Oakland Athletics to two runs on five hits in 6 1/3 innings. That's good enough for an average team to win on most nights, and yet the Angels offense failed once again to produce anything beyond their typical sequence of weakly batted balls. They only scored at all because Jemile Weeks collided with Daric Barton while fielding a pop-fly off the bat of Mike Trout, which the official scorer mercifully ruled as a double. As Mark Gubicza would say, it looks just like a line-drive in the box score (and on Trout's already gaudy Rookie of the Year resume). As I would say, although it's a one-run loss on paper, it's a shutout in my heart.

So the brave new Wells-less world still won't fix everything. The Angels have now scored five runs across three consecutive losses to meager West Coast opponents. A world-burning march to a division championship is probably not in the cards, no matter how long the Cursed One stays on the disabled list. At least someone else gets a chance to actually generate some value in the outfield, while Arte collects on whatever insurance policy he took out on Vernon Wells. It's truly a sick, sick world where one of your own getting injured is a win for everyone.

Mike Scioscia's Angels, ladies and gentlemen. Shutting out your heart since 2009.

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