What is the story about?
Angels
3, Rangers 2
- I regret to inform you that there is no winning streak.
- Kind of a weird game, really.
- Cody Bradford made his second start of the year, and though he was on a pitch limit, he still went seven innings.
- How, you may ask? Efficiency. Bradford needed just 75 pitches to get through those seven innings. He faced 26 batters in all, which meant he averaged fewer than three pitches per batter.
- Not surprisingly, given that, he walked only one batter and struck out only one batter.
- Bradford wasn’t missing bats in this outing — he got just four swings and misses. He also gave up a lot of loud contact, giving up 9 hard hit balls out of the 23 balls in play.
- Yet he just gave up five hits, and you would think that five hits and a walk (and, yeah, a hit by pitch thrown in) would mean little in the way of scoring by Anaheim.
- Its that whole sequencing thing, though. Three hits and the hit by pitch all came in the third inning, resulting in three runs.
- One of the three hits was a double, and it came last, which was bad from a sequencing standpoint as well, at least if you were trying to keep runs off the board.
- If there was a double first, then a couple of singles, then a hit by pitch, then you probably are ending the inning with just one run scoring.
- Such is the game of baseball.
- Joc Pederson homered to lead off the game and walked three times, but Wyatt Langford and Corey Seager, hitting in the 2 and 3 spots, were each 0 for 4, so the walks didn’t lead to anything.
- Jarred Kelenic, back in the majors in place of Jonah Bride, who I hope enjoyed his two days in the majors, had a pinch hit RBI single. It was the one hit the Rangers had with runners in scoring position.
- It was a winnable game that the Rangers didn’t win. The Astros lost, so you can either be relieved that the Rangers didn’t lose any ground, or mad that they didn’t move into first place.
- That’s up to you, which way you go with that. I am not going to tell you how to live your life.
- Cody Bradford topped out at 89.8 mph with his fastball, averaging 88.3 mph. Chase Silseth hit 96.5 mph with his fastball.
- Ezequiel Duran had a 105.5 mph single. Brandon Nimmo had a 105.1 mph single and a 100.9 mph single. Joc Pederson had a 104.8 mph homer. Justin Foscue ended the game with a 103.0 mph fly out. Corey Seager had a 101.0 mph fly out.
- Moving on. Another game ahead. Its a marathon, not a sprint.
