Albert Pujols goes yard twice and Angels kick off second half with sweep of White Sox

Angels 8 White Sox 1

While I was on a plane from Kansas City to Los Angeles last night, Matt Shoemaker was pitching out of his mind. Two nights ago, Hector Santiago gave the Halos seven solid innings. There have been runs aplenty in both contests, and the post-All Star break life for this team is pretty good. My only hope was that, having missed The Cobbler’s game while it was happening, that I could get one last dose of great pitching in this series.

Jered Weaver was no Shoemaker, but he was still pretty dang good, and the Angels dropped a whole bunch of offense on Chicago again. That’s what I call satisfying.

Weaver the Younger finished his day with 7.0 IP, 6 H and one single earned run. He also had one walk, and one strikeout, as he used his beguiling 85-87 MPH fastball, the breaking ball and off-speed junk with impunity. This is the third good showing from Angels starting pitching in the three games they’ve been back from vacation.

Of course, those days and nights of superb dealing are rendered useless without the run support, and today it was kick started by Albert Pujols. Pujols had himself a two 2-run homer afternoon, his 53rd multi-jack game in his illustrious career. Guys towards the bottom end of the lineup, like Gregorio Petit (2-4, RBI double) and Jett Bandy (RBI double), were also doing there part with big hits, as well as the usual goodness from Yunel Escobar (2-4, 1 Run) and Mike Trout (double, 2 runs).

All in all, the Halos dropped eight runs on the White Sox to their one, and just like that we have the second half start out with a series sweep. If I were looking at this more pessimistically, then I’d note that the White Sox came into this scrum pretty cold, and not a terribly good team. However, the season has a new-ish feel and the Angels showed us a weekend of excellently played baseball, on the pitching, hitting and defensive fronts; they ticked off all the boxes of what good teams do to win games.

This is something I could get very used to.