A blown save turns into a glorious 3-2 walkoff over the Orioles.

When Billy Eppler gave the Angels their best offseason in recent memory, he made a commitment toward exciting baseball day in and day out, win or lose. So even when a boring one-sided game almost sorta pitchers duel looked like it was going to rear its head, the Angels decided to give us yet another distinct, memorable moment. Actually, several.

We saw the first three-intentional walk game of Trout’s career, a hilarious little league home run from Andrelton Simmons, and a comeback from the enemies, culminating in the redemption we were all hoping for: Justin Upton’s walkoff bases-loaded single.

The stage was set by Upton’s previous four plate appearances. Upton had a total of 7 runners left on base today. The first inning alone saw J-Up come to the plate with no one on. Each time, he hopelessly grounded out or struck out. Trout was intentionally walked three times and pitched around once more to get to the struggling Left Fielder, but in the 9th, he lined a single and locked up a Gatorade bath.

This was much more exciting than a lousy save. Bedrosian was being a good guy here and allowing Justin to have his moment. There’s no chance that he would have allowed 2 runs and a blown save in the top of the 9th had Upton not needed the chance at redemption! Let’s be real here. We knew from the moment Andrelton Simmons smashed his 4-base double that this game was safely in our hands after all.

There were many other redemption stories tonight too. Maldonado had a 0-34 stretch going into tonight and had 3 hits, eventually getting the go-ahead run on first which would score on the Upton single. Also, two of them were what you might call real hits. Especially the booming double to left center. Also, Valbuena hit his fourth home run of the season. While his average for April was actually at an all-time high, his power seemed to evaporated, so this was good to see from the slugging bat-flipper. Tropeano also bounced back from a bad past couple performances to give us 6 1⁄₃ innings of fantastic shut-out ball. In fact, he only allowed a single hit to Machado and a couple walks. Phenomenal, especially in the wake of an article in which I just heavily criticized the starting rotation.

And who could leave out Ohtani? While he was a non-factor in the scoring department, he also hit a masculine double to make sure the media isn’t turning their heads away for even a moment.

Yes, even in boring 3-2 games, the Angels are must-see TV. Win or lose, day or night, rain, sunshine, snow, doesn’t matter. This is a team who comes out every single night and screams into the mics,

“ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”