The Los Angeles Angels just got swept by the woeful Washington Nationals, who weren't so woeful over the weekend.
The Los Angeles Angels are coming off a road trip that had a bad ending as they were swept over the weekend by the Washington Nationals, but at least they’ll have a Reid Detmers start to look forward to when they return home to face the Seattle Mariners.
Detmers has been one of the few reasons to watch the Angels in this death-march of a second half. He’s been consistently brilliant, and he’s given up just two earned runs in his last five starters, a stretch that covers his last 33 innings.
The left-hander hasn’t been rewarded much for his efforts, but he did get a win in his last outing as the Angels beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-1, with Detmers shutting out the Bosox on just a single hit. Before that he had three straight losses in which he gave up just those two runs, so he’s well aware of what he’ll be up against tonight.
The Angels shocked the Red Sox with a series win at Fenway Park, but they reverted back to their usual selves against the Washington Nationals, who rose up when they realized they had an opponent that would lay down for them. The Angels blew lead after lead in the series, and they punctuated that futility with late rallies that fell short throughout the weekend.
The Mariners have been one of the biggest disappointments in baseball this year, but their rallying cry for this series could well be “at least we’re not the Angels.”
They’ve fallen out of contention in the mediocre AL West, which takes some doing, and they’re now five games behind the Houston Astros with a record of 70-80 with the Texas Rangers currently above them in the standings. Seattle’s wild-card prospects are even worse, as they’re six games out there with five teams ahead of them in the race for the third wild card.
The Mariners are coming off a sketchy stretch in which they’ve managed to lose five of seven to the Athletics that inlcludes dropping two of three in West Sacramento over the weekend. That’s hard to do given that the A’s are almost as bad as the Angels.
The lone drama for the rest of the season in Anaheim is whether the Angels can avoid a 100-loss season. They have 13 games left, so they’d have to go 7-6 to do it, and you’d have to go back to May to find the last time the Angels were playing anything close to .500 baseball.
