Yusmeiro Petit is your Angels starter tomorrow, giving us our first look at the roster dark horse

Tomorrow, the Angels will suit up in their spring training uniforms and take the field of Tempe Diablo to square off against the Milwaukee Brewers. The moment when the first pitch leaves the hand of the Brewers’ starting pitcher will be the exact moment when spring training has fully sprung; the boys are gathered together, they’ve practiced and worked out some, and now it’s time to get to business.

I think it’s safe to say if you’re an Angels fan, you’re currently at the apex of excitement, ready to jump into the action-packed jet stream that is the MLB baseball season. To quote Bruce Buffer, “It’s time!”.

Saturday is going to have the aforementioned Brewers @ Angels tussle, and with it comes the Halos debut of Yusmeiro Petit, who has been announced as the day’s starting pitcher. Petit was signed to a minor league contract earlier this month, with an invite to camp. Billy Eppler intimated at the time that Petit was going to get a look at the starter position, although he’s got value as a reliever, as well.

So, what to expect from Petit? Well, he’s a 32 year old vet, who most baseball fans might recognize from the World Series champion Giants teams in 2012 and 2014 (he was with SF from 2012-2015), but most recently he was with the Nationals. Petit looked pretty decent last year, coming out of the pen for Washington, but kind of fizzled out in the last six weeks or so of the season.

Hopefully we get a glimpse of his killer curve tomorrow, along with his nifty slider and fastball; those are his bread and butter, basically. The location is decent, too, but his change-up is nothing to get excited about and can cause some problems for him.

The first guy we’ll see take the mound for the Halos in 2017 will be a new face, and one that was taken on in early February, as almost an afterthought, but don’t sleep on Petit. I think at the very least, he gets bullpen/long reliever work for the Angels this season...man, do they need help in that arena. But that’s exactly what Petit can provide, and if things are firing on all cylinders for him, then he’s going to fight for a fifth starter job.

We’ll find out soon enough, but be sure to tune in tomorrow and check out one of the many new guys we’re going to see donning Angels red this season. The game starts at 12:10 pm (PST), but it looks like Fox Sports West wont be broadcasting the game until 4 o’clock.

Alright, Angels fans. Here we go.