Angels sign Athletics’ yearbook with “U just lost 8-6 & got swept, LOL! See u next year!”

Angels 8 Athletics 6

The fourth inning is now probably my favorite inning in baseball, because that is the inning where the Angels ALWAYS score 7+ runs off of 8 or so hits. Also, the only Angels games I’ve ever watched were last night’s and tonights; so, they do this every game right?

Ahhhh, ok...back to reality. It’d be chill if they could indeed treat us to Halo Blitz’s of this order and magnitude, but having another fourth inning where they pulverized the A’s pitching and crowded up the base paths is good enough for me at this point.

Of course, unlike last night, they almost squandered this insane outpouring of offense, but we’ll get to that later.

So, the fourth inning. There wasn’t a grand slam from Jefry Marte, in front of his visiting mother in the stands, but there was basically everything else: Andrelton Simmons RBI single, Simmons RBI walk (yeah, one of those kinds of innings), Gregorio Petit RBI single, an RBI double from Shane Robinson, and a homer from Kole Calhoun! The A’s ended up facing 14 Halos batters, 11 straight got on base (!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

All in all, eight runs were scored off of eight hits. The score was 8-2, with Oakland having a couple runs off of a Ryon Healy RBI double and Yonder Alonso RBI single in the first, when Halos starter Alex Meyer was still getting acclimated.

Speaking of Meyer, he wasn’t quite as sturdy as his last start, but he still got 4.0 IP under his belt, giving up five hits and those two runs I just mentioned. It’s not ideal that he needed just shy of 80 pitches to get through those four innings, but checking out his five Ks kind of acts as a salve to any Meyer hesitancy wound.

The Angels settled in once again as the big, mean rulers of the roost, proud of the embarrassment they had given to their division rivals, in their last meeting of the season. Which of course meant that they’d also go on cruise control and up the likelihood of mistakes.

For the Angels, that manifested in two home runs: one in the sixth from Khris Davis (his 41st of the season, dang!), off of reliever Mike Morin, and the other was a three-run shot in the eighth by Marcus Semien, served up by Brett Oberholtzer.

All of a sudden, it was 8-6, the six run lead slashed to two runs, but the A’s had no comeback in them tonight and the Angels weren’t in the mood to make any more gaffes to hand their visitors the win. J.C. Ramirez got the save in the ninth, and that locked in their one-sided sweep of the A’s.

What better way to say “See you next year” to an AL West contemporary than with a commanding sweep? There is no better way. This was the best way.