One good inning isn’t enough to lift the Angels over the A’s

Angels 2 Athletics 4

Wasn’t it fun being a .500 team for a while? It didn’t even last 24 hours but it happened! Hopefully you all enjoyed it because the Angels are back to more notches in the loss column than the win column. I’ve been told that’s bad.

The reality was the Angels couldn’t hit anything for the better part of the game. Brett Anderson was doing acey stuff, shutting out the Angels over 6 innings with only 3 hits allowed.

Angels starter Felix Pena didn’t fare so well, giving up a pair or run on 2 outs in both the 3rd AND 4th innings. That’s a bad case of 2 out-itis. Pena didn’t even make it out of that inning.

When the 8th inning rolled around, the Angels offense finally sort of woke up. Fletcher led off and got on base thanks to a Jurrickson Profar error. Zach Cozart Double, Mike Trout hit a sac fly, Simba had an RBI and Pujols knocked his second hit of the night. The Angels had put 2 on the board and had a nice little rally going. BUT - then home plate Chris Guccione decided to throw away all regard for the strike zone. First check this out:

Then the video:

Simba’s reaction to that call:

Instead of bases loaded, one out, it was two runners on and 2 outs. The rally ended one batter later when Jonathan Lucroy popped up to second base.

You can blame this one on the Chris Guccione, and maybe that’s fair. But the Angels offense slept through most of this game (including going out 1-2-3 in the 9th) and it’s kind of hard to win it all in just one inning.

Back to being losers, the Angels can hopefully split this series with a win tomorrow. It wasn’t really a fun game unless you count those 10-15 minutes or so in the 8th inning. The rest? Bah humbug.