Angels beat talented Junis in chilly conditions, make it heavenly seven straight

Angels 5, Royals 3

42 degrees at first pitch. The Angels wearing balaclavas over their heads. And that was before it started snowing. At least Mike Trout was happy.

Jakob Junis, wunderkind for the Royals, better known by his alias...well, no, he’s not known at all. Let me link his BBRef page. Coming into this game, he hadn’t allowed a run in 2018.

In the first two innings, it was fire pitching, with Junis striking out two in the top half of the first, and Garrett Richards matching that number in the bottom half. Junis came back in the second and struck out Kole Calhoun, and Richards one-upped him by punching out another two in the bottom half.

Then Luis Valbuena took Junis deep with a massive swing (and no resulting bat-flip).

Now, the Royals are a major league baseball team, but sometimes major league baseball teams get into ruts. The Royals 2018 schedule features an interesting quirk where if their opponents score, they can’t win the game. The three Royals wins this year have been 1-0, 1-0, and 10-0. So after Valbuena cracked that HR, the game was basically over.

Then Justin Upton added on.

And a guy named Mike Trout. You might have heard of him.

And the wunderkind Junis was gone. Richards continued dealing, until the 5th inning, when he promptly fell out of his tree. It started out with a (less-than) harmless walk. And as the rain started turning into snow, Richards threw (count-em) three wild pitches, at one point bouncing three straight pitches in front of home plate. He made a pitch to get Alcides Escobar to GIDP, but it was clear his day was nearly over.

In the sixth, Jorge Soler straight up dropped a ball in right field, leading to an Angels run. In the bottom part, Richards walked amazing major league baseball player Drew Butera on 5 pitches, and Mike Scioscia pulled him.

The Angels made things interesting in the 7th and 8th innings, giving up 2 runs to allow the Royals within 2. But Keynan Middleton came in and slammed the door shut, and that’s all she wrote for 7 straight! Not bad in the snow!