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Alexander: Angels and Dodgers have switched places

June 20, 2023

Traditionally, June is when the Dodgers start to surge. And a year ago, late May and early June was when what had appeared to be a promising Angels’ season went in the tank, with a 14-game losing streak, a change in managers and the unraveling of the team’s agreement with the city of Anaheim over Angel Stadium’s future leading into another dreary summer in Orange County.

And now? As the Dodgers and Angels begin a two-game series in Anaheim on Tuesday night, the Angels are surging and the Dodgers’ season almost seems to be hanging by a thread, and maybe those assumptions about who’s a seller and who’s a buyer at the trade deadline have been knocked askew.

(Memo to all of those pundits who insist the Angels must trade Shohei Ohtani before he abandons them in free agency: Shut up.)

The Angels enter Tuesday night 41-33, 4½ games behind first-place Texas in the AL West and second in the AL wild-card standings, with 11 wins in 14 games. They’re rolling even as injuries continue to ravage the lineup; Anthony Rendon was placed on the injured list on Monday, the third infielder to go to the IL in the last week.

Interestingly enough, as KLAA’s Trent Rush noted when we talked this weekend, the possible turning point to this Angels season might have come on the almost one-year anniversary of what might have been last season’s inflection point.

That was a Sunday afternoon game in Philadelphia last June 5, when the Angels – who had already lost 10 straight after a 27-17 start – blew a 6-2 eighth-inning lead. Bryce Harper hit a grand slam to tie it, and Bryson Stott’s two-run walk-off shot off Jimmy Herget decided it, 9-7. Two days later, Joe Maddon was fired and Phil Nevin was promoted.

So flash forward to this past June 4 in Houston. The Angels had lost the first three of a four-game series and trailed 1-0 when Luis Rengifo tied it with a homer to deep right-center in the sixth. Ohtani doubled in the go-ahead run in the eighth, and that 2-1 victory launched this 11-3 stretch, including three out of four against the Rangers last week in Arlington.

Consider this, too: The Angels blew an 8-2 lead in Kansas City on Saturday, with former Corona High star Samad Taylor providing the walk-off hit in a 9-8 Royals victory. The next day, Ohtani and Mike Trout – the latter battling the worst slump of his career for more than a month – hit back-to-back homers in a 5-2 victory.

Their counterparts up the freeway could have used such a momentum-arresting moment this past weekend. Then again, having the worst bullpen in the National League makes it difficult to escape the torture the Dodgers have faced over the last month.

They’re 11-17 since May 18, and the pitching that has been the foundation of their franchise for six decades is letting them down. They’ve given up 167 runs in those 28 games, and the last time that happened was in 1958, their first season in L.A., when an aging, flawed team finished seventh in an eight-team league and played its home games in the Coliseum.

Remember what we’ve always said about how every fan base in baseball hates its bullpen at one time or another? It’s safe to say Dodger fans currently despise theirs with the heat of a thousand suns. Alex Vesia, Victor González, Phil Bickford, Yence Almonte, Brusdar Graterol … all have veered between undependable and abysmal. Evan Phillips has been the only trustworthy reliever, and even he gave up a walk-off homer in Cincinnati on the last road trip.

Naturally, Manager Dave Roberts gets most of the blame. But what’s he supposed to do when almost every option is a bad one? Pitch Phillips three innings every night?

(Maybe Roberts should pull out the Winston Churchill speech. When the Dodgers were 16-26 early in the 2018 season, he quoted the British prime minister’s line, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” The next night he told them, “Expect good things to happen,” and they went on a 14-3 run and eventually won the division. But at least that team had a functioning pitching staff.)

While the bullpen ERA is 29th in baseball (5.04, only a half-run better than the Oakland A’s), this is a staff-wide issue. Dodger starters’ collective ERA is 4.38 and 16th in baseball, and that number has plunged since Julio Urías went on the IL, but the more pressing concern is an inability to go deep enough into games to take some of the burden off of the bullpen.

Of the last 15 games, dating to June 6, Dodger starters have completed six innings seven times. Three of those were by Clayton Kershaw (two of them seven-inning stints), two by Bobby Miller and one by Emmet Sheehan, who pitched six no-hit innings in his big league debut Friday night against the San Francisco Giants only to watch the bullpen blow a 4-0 lead after he left.

The other choices? Bullpen games, watching young starters try to figure things out, or praying for the best when Noah Syndergaard goes to the mound. They’ll have a decision to make when he comes off the 15-day disabled list, which could be as early as Saturday.

The three-game sweep by San Francisco over the weekend was embarrassing enough. Naturally, the Giants treated it with the sensitivity and compassion you might expect, posting an image of the HOLLLYWOOD sign on social media.

Get it? Three L’s.

Greetings from HoLLLywood pic.twitter.com/gHIXISi4nx

— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 18, 2023

Maybe that sweep, and seeing the Giants vault into second place, will spur some urgency from Andrew Friedman, Brandon Gomes and the rest in the executive suites. The Dodgers have made 27 transactions involving 19 different pitchers in June alone, mainly involving the shuttle between L.A. and Oklahoma City.

But there’s no sense waiting for the Aug. 1 trade deadline to make a move, or assuming that the imminent return of Urías or Daniel Hudson will straighten things out by itself, or banking on any sort of late-season return from Walker Buehler or Dustin May. The pitching staff needs help now because the three-wild-card playoff format isn’t that forgiving.

Before Monday night’s games, the Dodgers were one game ahead of Philadelphia for the third and final NL wild-card spot. The Angels, in the No. 2 AL spot, were a game and a half clear of the cutoff.

Even the most loyal, devoted, optimistic Angel fan couldn’t have seen that one coming, right?

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Angels players celebrate after their 3-0 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Friday night in Kansas City, Mo. The Angels enter Tuesday night’s game against the Dodgers with a 41-33 record and 11 wins in their past 14 games. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Orange County Register

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Alexander: Angels and Dodgers have switched places

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