Entire team has enough and wins last game of August

Despite a rough past couple appearances, Dillon Peters has consistently shown up to play (for an Angel pitcher). In the second-to-last game of the season series against the Red Sox, however, the offense joined him.

Despite an incredibly rough first inning, Peters received yet another quality start as he held the strong Boston lineup to 4 runs, 3 of which were earned. As the game went on, he appeared to get better and better, the 26-pitch opening frame being his biggest mistake. He exited after 6.1 with 6 strikeouts and 0 walks. If nothing else, Peters has been incredible this year at limiting the free pass, a huge accomplishment for any Angel.

The Angel bats, worried that the solid start might go to waste, labored to push across 3 runs and keep the game close. The team was 3-11 with RISP at this point, and frustration was mounting.

At some point though, things have to start falling in. No one is going to lose out from August 31st onward, no matter how much that would benefit our draft position next year. If you continue to get runners on base and have people bat in high leverage, somewhere between ¹⁄₄ and ¹⁄₃ of the time, hits will happen.

It seems that all of those hits took place in the 8th inning, when Ryan Brasier relieved Matt Barnes and turned in a performance truly worthy of a former Halos pitching prospect. Serving up 3 consecutive singles to tie the game, he would then get two consecutive outs. Conveniently, no appearance is worthy of the name “meltdown” without such a situation.

David Fletcher hit his 30th double of the season on an elevated pitch to drive in the go ahead run. After Trout’s intentional walk to load the bases, Goodwin then continued to absolutely wreck the Red Sox with a 2-run knock. Brasier held back the waterworks as he walked off the mound, but the Pujols 3-run jimmy jack that followed likely broke the dam off camera.

In other news, Trout became the youngest player to ever make it to the 200-200 club, Pujols had the 17th 20-bomb season of his career, and MVP “candidate” Rafael Devers has gone 0-11 in the first two games of this series.

It seems that the Angels had their best non-Heaney day in a while, so that’s good.

We now return to your regularly scheduled tankathon.