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Pearly Gates: An Angels Blog
Pearly Gates: An Angels Blog
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Saturday, August 14, 2004

Angels 11, Tigers 8

Where in the hell did that come from? Four homeruns is literally shocking coming from this team. You know how long it's been since we've seen a genuine offensive explosion form this club? Too long, that's for sure. A couple of interesting numbers from tonight's game:

  • The Angels hit four homeruns tonight. They had hit four in the previous eight games combined.

  • The Angels last hit multiple homeruns on Saturday, July 30th against Seattle- 12 games ago.
This offensive explosion was due in no small part to Scioscia's new-and-improved lineup:

  1. David Eckstein
  2. Darin Erstad
  3. Vladimir Guerrero
  4. Jose Guillen
  5. Garret Anderson
  6. Robb Quinlan
  7. Tim Salmon
  8. Jose Molina
  9. Chone Figgins
Finally, a little common sense from the Skip. There's nothing about this lineup that I can take issue with (other than the absence of Jeff DaVannon, who should own the two spot by now). I especially like the decision to move Quinlan up and Anderson down. I suppose it would be nice if Figgy and Erstad would swap places, but given the way Figgins has played lately, I don't think it would change much. Mad props to Sciosica on this one- now stick with it for a few weeks and see what happens.

Notice that I've made two positive observations- this is me gushing. Don't get used to it. Now I'm going to drop a bit of reality on you.

We're still screwed, and this game is the best evidence yet. Yes, we won. Of course that's great, and obviously it's the most important thing, blah, blah, blah. But Ramon Ortiz got bombed on tonight (6 ER in 4.2 IP). Colon got ripped on Thursday. Sele has gotten annihilated over the past two months. That's 3/5 of the rotation, all showing troubling inconsistency (or being consistently horrendous). With Washburn out, these are three men who are going to have to carry us into the playoffs (well, maybe not so much Sele). Without them pitching at their best, we don't have a chance.

Do you trust these men?

I rest my case.

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