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2022 Season | Series #45 | Angels @ Guardians | Sep. 12-14, 2022

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Wham with the Right Hand

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Coming off a very successful 5-1 road trip and a sweep of the battered Twins the Guardians come home for a tough matchup against the Los Angeles Angels. The Halos may be 29 games behind Houston and 30-39 on the road, but they are 9-6 in their last 15 games, including six against the Astros where they went 2-4.

The Angels swept a four-game series against the Guardians in April, outscoring them 20-7 in LA. The Guardians scored 0, 1, 5, and 1 run in the four games.

The Angels are a bad matchup for the G’s due to their excellent left-handed starting pitching. The Guardians are hitting .229/.628 against lefties versus .258/.712 against right-handers. The Angels will start three lefties this series with ERA’s of 2.98, 3.67, and 3.77. Runs will most likely be hard to come by.

The Guardians are starting Pilkington, Morris, and TBD, so the Angels will have the edge in starting pitching every game.

As if that weren’t enough, Mike Trout is hitting .375/1.444 in September. He hit .417 against Cleveland in April with 3 doubles, a triple, and a home run.

Taylor Ward is also hot, hitting .321/.858 in September. He was a wrecking crew against the Guardians in April, hitting .438 with three HR’s and 9 RBI’s in four games.

Catcher Matt Thaiss is hitting .385/1.015 in September and 2B Luis Renjfo is hitting .333 this month.

So the Angels are a bad matchup and they’re playing well right now. They’re not scoring a lot, ranking 28th in runs per game since the All-Star break, but their starters are pitching well, ranking 10th in ERA. Their bullpen is not as good, ranking 29th in FIP and xFIP and 25th in home runs per 9 innings since the break.

Reid Detmers, a 23-year-old rookie, starts tonight. Since returning from the minors in July he is 3-2, 2.52 in nine starts. On April 28 he went 5 innings against the Guardians allowing 2 hits and one run in 89 pitches.


Detmers has been a little shaky lately, going just 19 innings in his last four starts - under 5 innings per start. In his last 26 innings he’s allowed 32 hits and 9 walks. Detmers has pitched 114 innings this year after pitching 83 last year so fatigue may be setting in for the youngster. The key is to run up his pitch count and get him out after 4-5 innings.

Konnor Pilkington, 1-2, 3.99, goes for the Guardians. Pilkington has been pretty solid in his last four appearances, allowing six runs in 16 innings for a 3.37 ERA. As a starter opponents are hitting .285/.789 against him and the third time through the batting order they’re hitting .391/.996, so he is strictly a 4-5 inning starter who you hope can get through the order twice without a lot of damage.

Pilkington, 25, has a 5.66 ERA at Columbus this year and 4.75 in his last seven games. Lefties are hitting .323/.804 against him with the Guardians.

The Guardians have some momentum and the bats are starting to make a little noise, scoring 28 runs in the last six games. But until they start hitting better against lefties (and it's awfully late in the season to expect that to change) I don't expect them to score much against the Angels starters and we are starting three minor league pitchers this series. I would be happy if we can steal one game to be honest.
 
I'm playing with fire here. I often like to wear a Guardians or Guardians adjacent shirt on the day the first game of a series is, and this season we have not been doing well in those games, so if we lose 30-0 and Jose has 5 errors, you can blame me. :chuckle:
 
Angels are a good bad team.. They'd be a lot closer to our record if they were in the Central IMO.

Need to score early, or at least run up the pitch count.
 
The Guardians have some momentum and the bats are starting to make a little noise, scoring 28 runs in the last six games. But until they start hitting better against lefties (and it's awfully late in the season to expect that to change) I don't expect them to score much against the Angels starters and we are starting three minor league pitchers this series. I would be happy if we can steal one game to be honest.

Most sites other than mlb.com has Quant going on Thurs on normal rest as then he can go again on Monday vs Twins. Benefit of throwing another rookie on Wed is then Pilk gets bumped out of the 3 in Chic to line up the big 3 (assuming no rain outs etc - messing up schedule more). But with weekend DH ... you got to rest the pen as much as possible.

Yet, at this point, you got to throw your Big 3 as much as possible. With 24 games left over 23 days played. Less the next 2 games with our fill-ins going, we have 21 game days come Wednesday where the Big 3 will pitch in at least 4 games each. If nothing special is done, Quant will play a 5th game in KC on the last day. Yet, with one off day, you can speed up McK a day (skipping on of our rookies) and give McK a 5th game as well (and this bumps a rookie from Tampa). In my mind, you got to get Pilk/Curry out of the rotation as much as possible. The only problem with getting McK a 5th game on the last day Wed (if needed where everyone plays at 4:10 EST), is that he cannot go in the 3-game WC playoff (Fri, Sat, Sun). Yet, if we lose by 1 game, we are sitting home anyways.
 
Just some info on Detmers from reading things

He was supposed to go in Houston series but they had a guy coming back from injury on Friday and Detmers only threw 83 innings last year and up to 102 this year and to avoid Houston seeing him a 3rd time this year, all made their decision to push him back to today. He was sent to the minors earlier this year to work on his arm angle on his slider and now back. He was their 10th pick overall in 2020 draft and high on prospect boards, so we will see who shows up. He does better at home vs away in every metric but ERA (which is around 3.56/3.8 for home/away). But, Whip is 1.0 vs 1.4 h/a and BA is .195/.257. Think this will be our hardest win ... hope to start it off on the right foot.
 
Quantrill is now listed as the starter for Weds against the Angels and Monday against the Twins by ESPN. They have Bieber v. Archer Friday night but Archer is on the 15-day if I'm not mistaken. Saturday and Sunday will be interesting with Pilkington, Morris, and somebody else against Joe Ryan and two unannounced starters. Both teams are reaching down into the farm system for this critical series.

But first we need to take a game from the Angels. Hopefully Detmers is running low on gas and we can at least force him to throw a lot of pitches and have 4-5 innings to work on their bullpen. I don't see how Pickles is going to get through four innings unscathed against Trout, Ward, and the rest of them. Trout is hitting .333/1.089 against lefties. If first base is open with RISP I would walk him regardless of the inning or the situation.
 
As expected, the right squad is in tonight including Jose at DH so Freeman at 3B - no Naylor.

Kwan, Rosario, Jose, Gonzalez, Miller, Gimenez, Freeman, Hedges, Straw
 
As expected, the right squad is in tonight including Jose at DH so Freeman at 3B - no Naylor.

Kwan, Rosario, Jose, Gonzalez, Miller, Gimenez, Freeman, Hedges, Straw
I'm fine with no Naylor versus lefties. In fact I'd prefer it, not even so much performance related as just being able to give that ankle a rest. Freeman has earned PAs especially in these kind of games.
 
Is Miller really batting 5th over Gimenez again?

Only a 61 point wRc+ gap between the two
 
I'm fine with no Naylor versus lefties. In fact I'd prefer it, not even so much performance related as just being able to give that ankle a rest. Freeman has earned PAs especially in these kind of games.
It would be nice to see Freeman in the lineup against every lefty.. even when it makes sense as a pinch hitter versus a lefty..
 
Miller and Naylor have almost identical BA's and OPS's against RHP's.

The inability of right-handed hitters Miller (.181), Hedges (.158), Mercado (.200), Reyes (.167), and Ramirez (.234) to hit lefties this year has really impacted the offense.
 

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