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Mike Sciocia loves his veterans and he let C.J. Wilson pitch into the ninth inning in the hope that his starter would somehow benefit from the magic bats but the Angels didn't have it in them. C.J. Wilson lost for the first time since early July and will only have one more start to get a shot at his 18th win of the season.
Of course pitching wins is a terribly measured stat but Wilson has been the most consistent and durable Angels starter this season bar none. The bats abandoned him this time stranding 23 base-runners total. Four Angels batters stranded four baserunners apiece. Kole Calhoun was one of them but kind of made up for it with a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth inning to make it a 3-2 game. Howie Kendrick led off the second inning with a double and came around to score. Do those feats balance out leaving four men stranded apiece? At least they did something, while and 0 for 4 J.B. Shuck and 0 for 5 Erick Aybar each stranded four total on an empty afternoon.
Mariners pitcehrs struck out 15 Angels with four innings of Felix Hernandez accounting for ten of them. King FiFi's 92 pitches in that short of time yielded four walks, one hit, one run and an early shower. CJ threw 123 pitches all the way into the ninth. Eh struck out nine, walked one and allowed three runs on eight hits.
Mike Trout walked twice and struck out twice - when the two men in front of him are 0 for 9 with 8 LOB you gotta wonder how long he will really want to stick around in Anaheim. That and the swarm of Bees - not the Salt Lake Bees callups, but a game-delaying swarm of bees in the outfield which delayed the game for over ten minutes in the third inning. Yeah, that kind of season.