A week ago, it looked like we were all in for two stellar division races in both the AL West and the NL West. The Angels were hot on the heels of the Texas Rangers and the Giants and Diamondbacks were neck and neck. For once it looked like us West Coasters were going to be the focal point of the baseball world for the next several weeks. Hurrah! East Coast Bias was dead!
You’ll notice that I used the past tense in that last paragraph. You see, those supposedly tight races are suddenly looking pretty loose because the Angels and the Giants had to go and forget how to hit. Waa waa waaaaaaaaa.
To be fair, neither team actually forgot how to hit, they probably never really knew how in the first place. After all, the Giants have scored the second-fewest runs in baseball and the Angels have scored the third-fewest runs in the American League, so it wasn’t like the wheels suddenly came off these offensive juggernauts. But in the last week, matters definitely have taken turns for the worse, or even worse, in these two particular cases.
For the Angels, they were in perfect position to surge ahead of the Texas Rangers on the strength of their stellar starting pitching. Unfortunately, that pitching has gone for not as the Halos have mustered a mere 29 runs over their last eight games, six of which have been losses. Even more damning is that the last three of those losses have come against the very Ranger team they were hoping to overtake, but the Angels scored 4, 3 and 3 runs respectively in those games. Now they find themselves seven games back and basically out of the playoff hunt barring the entire Ranger roster being stricken with the bird flu at the same time.
As for the Giants, they too have scored only 29 runs in their last eight games. Fortunately for them, they’ve won four of those games, a mark good enough to keep them within 2.5 games of Arizona. That comes as small consolation though since the Giants actually led the Diamondbacks in the standings before that stretch. Like the Angels, San Francisco had been carrying them and, now, like the Angels, they are finding out that their rotation can only carry them so far.
The true shame of it is that as each of these teams search in vain for someone to perform the Heimlich maneuver on their seasons, we are in danger of losing out on two teams that could do serious damage in the post-season, if only they could get there. As the Giants showed us last year, it doesn’t take much offense to win a title when you have starting pitching like they do. The 2010 Giant lineup had plenty of trouble scoring runs, finishing ninth in the National League during the regular season. That wasn’t very good, but it was just enough for Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez and Bumgarner to do their thing and bring home the trophy. One would think they’d have little trouble following the same model this season, but their already limp offense has gone totally flaccid this year.
The Angels were surely hoping to emulate the 2010 Giants as well since they are well-armed with Jered Weaver, Dan Haren and Ervin Santana. It would have been a wonderful feel good story to see the Halos overcome the continued loss of Kendrys Morales and the mind-numbingly stupid acquisition of Vernon Wells to scratch their way past a more talented Ranger club, but that no longer appears to be in the cards, much to the chagrin of fans of awesome pitching match-ups in the post-season. Who wouldn’t want to see Haren vs. Beckett or Santana vs. Sabathia or the epic blood feud rematch of Weaver vs. Verlander in the post-season?
The good news is that while the Angels are all but out of it, the Giants still have a fighting chance. What they really need is for their lineup to catch lightning in a bottle, just like it did in the 2010 playoffs, only they need it to happen starting now and lasting through October if they hope to defend their title and treat us to a rematch of the stacked Philadelphia and San Francisco rotations.
It would be a real shame if we lost both of these teams from contention with so much baseball left and a crying shame if neither squad ended up in the playoffs. The Angels look pretty far gone, so let’s hope the Giants can’t get their act together and salvage at least half of this equation.
