Week 7 Halo Recap - The Good, the bad, and the meh

In this past week, the Angels lost a series to the Orioles (thanks to Joe Smith), but won a series against the Dodgers, and a whole lot of Halos are getting hot.  Still 4 games under .500, but there have been some exciting games and 4 wins in 7 games isn't the worst thing in the world is it?  Okay, so maybe our expectations have been lowered (or mine have, at least), and yea the Orioles won a series, but there is some fire in this team, and they will need it as they roll into Texas today.

THE GOOD

Beating the dirty rotten Dodgers 3 games to 1 is always a good thing.  Outscoring them 23-16 is also good.  If Kershaw hadn't pitched, we maybe could have swept this series, but that dude is kinda good.

Carlos Perez heard the fan calls of sending him down to AAA.  With the Jett Bandy call up in light of Geovany Soto's injury, perhaps he saw the need to prove himself, or perhaps he just starting clicking with more playing time.  Perez led the team over the past week with a .412 AVG, 2HR, 9 RBI, and he even stole a base!

How about that Albert Pujols??  No homeruns, but he was second to Perez with a .400 AVG and insane .516 OBP.  Pujols is batting .289 for the month of May.

Johnny Giavotella didn't take a single walk last week, but he made some great plays and hit .370 with 7RBIs.

Mike Trout is a regular on this list and last week he stole 2 bases and hit 2 homeruns on his way to a .469 OBP.  He also reminded opposing base runners why they need to think twice about running on his arm.

Yunel Escobar continues to perform at the top of the order with a .424 OBP last week and he drew 5 walks.

Gregorio Petit is doing a great job at SS and surely hits better than Brendan Ryan.  Petit hit .318 last week, which is a .318 improvement over Ryan.

Deolis Guerra, Cam Bedrosian, Greg Mahle, and Fernando Salas were a shutout crew out of the pen, with 9IP, 7Ks, and only 4 hits given up.

Nick Tropeano had his longest start of the season, going 7 innings and allowing only 1 run in a win over the Dodgers.

Jered Weaver had back to back 7 inning starts and was lights out (aside from a lone 2 run homer) against the hard hitting Orioles on Sunday.  Weaver struck out 8 and gave up only 5 earned runs over those 2 starts.

Matt Shoemaker also had his best start of the year with a dominate 7.1IP scoreless against Baltimore, and striking out a career high 12 in the process.

THE BAD

Seems like Joe Smith has only had a good week or two all season.  He single handedly blew the game on Sunday and turned a 1-0 lead in a 1-3 loss, despite Shoemaker's career best start.

Hector Santiago made it only 2.2 innings before being tossed on Friday night.  Starting off the game with 3 home runs in less than 3 innings (almost 4, if not for Mike Trout's great catch) is a horrible start.  After 3 straight balls to Matt Wieters, Santiago got off the mound and said "That was right over the f#$#ing plate", and was promptly tossed.  The 0-4 hole he dug was too big to climb out of and the Angels lost the game 4-9.

A.J. Achter was optioned to Salt Lake after giving up 3 runs and 6 hits over 2 IP on Friday. He has a 4.76 ERA on the year.

Jhoulys Chacin seemed like a prince after his first Angel start, but then he turned into a pumpkin last week, holding on for only 4.1IP in what turned out to be an Angel's win thanks to Mike Trout and the lockdown bullpen.

Error-cobar is back and now has 8 errors on the season.  His bad throw that should have been the third out, was followed by a 2 run homer that put the Angels behind 4-6, and a hole from which they couldn't recover.

Kole Calhoun finally had a rough week and only hit .207 with a team leading 8Ks.  Let's hope his K rate is not going back to where it was last year, and we can call this week a fluke (hopefully).

THE MEH

Rafael Ortega and C.J. Cron didn't have great weeks, combining for only 8 hits in 37 at bats.

Clayton Kershaw shut down the Angels in typical fashion on Tuesday. Yeah it's Clayton Kershaw, but it'd be nice if we mashed on a team's ace every once in a while.