Week 24 Halo Recap: the good, the bad, the meh (Raining on parades)

You need to find joy in the small things when your team 23 games out of first place at the end of September.  This past week, it was the Angels taking 4 out of 7 games, not allowing the Rangers to celebrate their division title on Wednesday, and beating the Astros 3 out of 4 games which may be a final nail in their hopes of a wildcard spot.  Thanks to the Angels, the Astros are now 3 games back with not a lot time left on the clock.

The Angels sure are making some of their remaining games and they have most likely have some good times left in them - like back to back 10 run games against the Houston Astros.  Baseball CAN be fun.  Yay!

THE GOOD

Mr. Zero, Yunel Escobar seemed to be not too affected by the new number on his back with a .360 average, .429 OBP and a rare homerun.

Kole Calhoun came back to the team as a new father and lack of sleep didn't seem to affect him too bad with a .357 AVG over 4 games.

Albert Pujols has been back on track lately and last week he matched Calhoun's average of .357 with another homeerun for the record books.

Making the most of his 17 AB, Rafael Ortega had a .368 OBP last week.

C.J. Cron knocked 4 doubles and had an OBP of .367 over his 15 at bats.

Mike Trout "only" hit .261 but his on base was a Trout-like .469, he drove in a team leading 7 RBIs and stole another base.

There were 7 Angels pitchers who had allowed 0 earned runs last week, though Deolis Geurra jacked up Alex Meyer's ERA by allowing in 2 inherited runners that he face.  The bullpen pitchers that put up zeros other that Guerra were AJ Achter, Andrew Bailey (who also racked up 2 more saves), Cody Ege, JC Ramirez, and Mike Morin.

Ricky Nolasco continues to impress and put up 7 scoreless innings last week with only 1 walk.

In two starts and 11 innings, Jhoulys Chacin had an ERA of just 0.82 with 8 Ks.

THE BAD

Jefry Marte was 2 for 10 and didn't do much else.

Andrelton Simmons is still amazing in the field but hit a major bump in his offense over the past week with only a .167 AVG

He's never really hit all year, so it's no surprise Cliff Pennington batted only .143.

Carlos Perez has been a hitting bust most weeks and his .111 last week was no exception to that.

Nick Buss isn't helping his case for an outfield spot with his 1 for 10 last week.

Rounding out the many sub .200 hitters last week was Gregorio Petit and his ugly .091 AVG

Daniel Wright was just plain horrible.  A 6.75 ERA last week in 10.2 innings with 8 runs allowed and a .372 BAA.

Jose Alvarez took a tie game in the 9th and flushed it down the toilet taking a loss against the Rangers.

Cory Rasmus blew a save in that same game that Alvarez took the loss.  Nice tandem guys!

THE MEH

Jett Bandy, Ji-Man Choi, Jett Bandy, Kaleb Cowart, and Shane Robinson all didn't contribute much, but they also only had a combined 14 at bats.

Brett Oberholtzer didn't suck, but he didn't really do much either. 3.1 innings with 1 run allowed plus 3 hits and a walk.

Also not horrible, Jered Weaver lasted 6 innings while allowing 4 runs and he managed to strike out 6.

Alex Meyer may have landed in the good section, but he left the game with the bases loaded and instead of 5 innings with 2 runs allowed, he ended up with 5.1 innings and 4 allowed - thanks to Guerra giving up some hits in relief.  Meyer had 3 walks so control can still be a probably for him at times, though mostly when he gets tired.