The Los Angeles Angels moved nearly half their staff yesterday at the deadline, so this one will be interesting.
It’s tryout time for the Los Angeles Angels, who dealt close to half their pitching staff at the deadline, and they’ll head into their series opener against the Baltimore Orioles with a skeleton crew available to take the mound.
Specifically, the Halos moves starter Jose Soriano and relievers Brent Suter, Ryan Zeferjahn and Kirby Yates at the deadline, so the bullpen will be especially impacted in this one. The Angels also moved reliever Chase Silseth in one of the first moves before the deadline, so those calls to the bullpen could come with some sketchy conversations tonight.
The Angels will start Grayson Rodriguez as they continue to try to get him right. Rodriguez was hurt early, then bad initailly, although he does post an occasional outing where it looks like he could be part of a real major league staff.
Rodriguez was surprisingly decent in his last start, as he gave up two runs in five innings to the Houston Astros in a game the Angels lost 7-4. Before that, though, he got knocked around by both the San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers in his two starts before that as he surrendered a total of 11 runs. The right-hander claims his delivery is coming along, but we’ve yet to see it on the mound so far.
The Orioles haven’t named a starter for this one, which isn’t surprising given that they were mostly sellers at the deadline yesterday. They did suffer some significant losses, though, as they subtracted star catcher Adley Rutschman, outfielder Taylor Ward and reliever Tyler Wells in a series of deadline moves, with right-hander Dean Kremer also leaving via an earlier trade.
Baltimore is currently battling to stay out of the basement in the AL East, as they come into this one 12.5 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays. The Angels, meanwhile, have the worst record in baseball at 43-69, and they’re battling against the Athletics to get out of the basement in the AL West.
The Angels will also have a couple of big lineup changes going forward, with catcher Logan O’Hoppe subtracted in the same trade that sent Silseth to the Texas Rangers. Outfielder Jo Adell was moved to the Cleveland Guardians, so look for Wade Meckler and Josh Lowe to be getting more lineup time as the Angels scramble for a bit to fill in.
This isn’t expected to be a headline series by any means, but it should be interesting to see what these two teams look like given how active they both were at the deadline.
