Los Angeles Angels with a PREDICTABLY BAD Series vs. A’s, Jo Adell & Christian Moore Salvage Series

Los Angeles Angels with a PREDICTABLY BAD Series vs. A’s, Jo Adell & Christian Moore Salvage Series

On this episode of Locked On Angels, I have a cheer for you. Give me a P, an A, a T, an H, an E, a T I C. What’s that spell? Angels. They win three in a row against the Dodgers, but they lose two out of three to the A’s. But we all kind of expected it, right? Because we’ve been Angels fans for a really long time. We’ve got our takeaways from this weekend, and we’re going to share them with you today. It’s time to get locked on with Mike and John. And this is Locked On Angels. [Music] You are Locked on Angels, your daily Los Angeles Angels podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network. Your team every day. Thanks for making Locked on Angels your first listen of the day. You can find us anywhere you get your podcast, including Apple Podcast, Spotify, and SiriusXM by searching Locked on Angels. And if you’d like to get back to the Super Halo Bros for all the Super Halo content, here’s some things that you can do. Leave us a rate and a review on Apple Podcast. Hit that thumbs up button and subscribe button on YouTube. And while you’re here, leave a comment. It’s one of the best ways to get in touch with John and I and be a part of the conversation. And this episode of Locked on Angels is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is just around the corner. Visit the FanDuel app today and start planning your futures bets now. And we’d love to invite you to the second annual Logan Hoppy All-Star Bull Sunday night, September 7th, starting at 5:00 PM. We’re raising money for the YMCA of Orange County. And you can get your tickets by clicking the episode link. The description has all of that detail for you. And then when you get your tickets, just use our promo code Halo Bros. So you can be on our team and get a discount. Can’t wait to bowl with you and our best buddy Logan Oppoy on Sunday night, September 7th. Thanks for being here for this episode of Locked on Angels, where it’s your team every day. You’ve got the Fresh Brothers here with you, aka the Super Halo Bros. My name is John, and that’s my brother Mike. And my name is Mike. And that’s my brother John. John, do you think that when Logan talks about us, he says best buddies, too? or using a pipe dream. No, no, no, no. I know he he does. Listen, we’ve been fans of this team for years. It’s our fourth season here talking Angels baseball with you Monday through Friday, every single weekday. Unfortunately, our knowledge of being our knowledge from being fans of this team for years and years and years, our whole lives led us to believe that this weekend was going to go the way that it pretty much did, Mike. In fact, we’re going to give you our takeaways and everything you need to know about this weekend series up in Sacramento against the A’s. Mike, let’s take it to Friday’s game, which was a loss 10 to3 to the Athletics. Yeah. First takeaway is Kikuchi had more traffic on the bases than the 101 freeway during rush hour in LA because my goodness, this guy, five hits, three walks through three innings for Kikuchi in this game through 80 pitches through three innings. And one major reason, John, is the A’s, they fouled off every single almost every single pitch he threw. In fact, they had 35 foul balls against Kikuchi on Friday. He’s allowed the second most foul balls in baseball this year. So, here’s what that means. It means he’s not getting the snap or the break on his offspe stuff. A lot of it is flat. A lot of it is over the middle of the plate, but not necessarily hitable, meaning that they’re going to straighten it out, but they’re making contact and it’s making the pitches, the pitch count grow. John, he didn’t use his fast ball as often as this breaking stuff, and it felt like the A’s were picking up on that because they looked really comfortable at the plate. In fact, the A’s fouled off 37% of Kikuchi’s pitches, which is more than double the major league average of 18. Good grief. Wild. And so that’s why he had a lot of pitches through the first few innings. And then add to that, he had a a leadoff hitter um in each of the first three innings that they reached on a homer, a single, and a walk. And then Kikuchi gave up a two uh sorry, two home runs in the first three innings. One to Langalers and then a three-run shot to Colobby Thomas. And that put the Halos down early. Then fourth inning, Kikuchi breezes, one, two, three. But that’d be it for him, John. just four innings, five hits, four one four runs, three walks, and three Ks. Threw 94 pitches in four innings. It was his second shortest outing of the year. The shortest was against the Twins back in April, April 26. He went two innings in that game. John, if the Angels are going to do anything in these last 40 or so games, they’re going to need their starters to go deeper in games because they’ve used the bullpen a whole lot. And we saw on Saturday that it was almost a repeat of Kikuchi’s start in what happened on Saturday with Tyler Anderson. Yeah. And if you go back to this last week where the Angels swept the Dodgers and you’re rolling into the weekend series hoping that you’re going to get some bright spots there, Mike, it really wasn’t a great pitching performance from the starting pitchers all week long, right? It wasn’t anything spectacular. It was just that the offense was able to get to the Dodgers bullpen, have some late inning heroics and things like that. But in this situation, the offense wasn’t able to come through. But it wasn’t that the starter set them up for success either. And so that’s what happened in this one. I don’t know why when you throw 98 on your fast ball that you’re not just slinging that thing in there and getting swings and misses at the top of the zone, you know, I’m a fan of throwing that fast ball at the top of the up the top of the zone. But yeah, you’re right. They just kept fouling things off and that’s easy to do when you’re getting predictable out there. You mentioned the bullpen, but our second takeaway is nothing changed when the bullpen entered this game, right? Lot of lot of foul balls and a lot of traffic on the bases. Started with Connor Brogden. He allowed three hits and two runs. Only was able to get two outs. He allowed 10 foul balls and threw 36 pitches in the fifth. Didn’t finish the inning on Friday night. Carson Fulmer entered and tried to eat some innings and that’s really all he did. He didn’t keep it close because he went three and a third, gave up six hits and four more runs including an eighth inning blast from Nick Curts who put the hurts on the Angels. Um, and speaking of good defense or good offense, the Angels didn’t have good offense in our third takeaway, right Mike? Yeah, they only had two really good innings. Top of the second, Travis Darno doubled and Monado is on on base and that tied the game at the at that time. And then top five, Teodosio led off with a walk and then Neto hits his 20th home run. Put the Halos down by one at that point. By the way, Neto is now officially in his second consecutive 2020 2020 season. Others to do that in Angels history, Don Baylor, Mike Trout, Show Otani. But John, the Angels just couldn’t capitalize or get anything going outside of those innings, could they? No. Most of the innings, the Halos didn’t do much. Like in the top of the fourth, they had first two hitters reached on singles. And the Angels did what they didn’t do against the Dodgers. They had zero productive outs. They didn’t score any runs. Adele popped out to center. Darno struck out. Christian Moore grounded out. And we all saw over that Dodger series where at least if somebody grounded out, you were getting that runner over to third. Then you’d follow that up with like a sacrifice fly, right? But the this pop out nonsense and the striking out and the grounding out just didn’t get anything done for the Halos, which leads into our fourth takeaway, doesn’t it, Mike? Yeah, this was the letdown that we expected. Listen, I I I’ve been an Angel fan since I was a kid. I I remember watching them at four, five years old. That’s 1984, 1985. I remember 1986. I remember those years vaguely. I remember more of the ‘9s because I was a high school kid and watched a lot during that time. John, you have been watching with me as my little brother, but you started really paying attention early 2000s and through the early 2000s and that because that was your high school years. And there were some fun teams in those early 2000s, but the ‘9s teams were teams that just weren’t good enough. And a lot of those teams were really, really bad. It feels like we’re back to those 90s teams right now with the teams of the last 11 years. And knowing that they just swept the Dodgers, I think everybody who was an everydayer had this like fear of entering this series with the A’s because we got all of this momentum and all of this excitement and then that Friday night game it came and we were like, what is happening? In fact, Zach Neto said, there’s no excuse for today. We came out flat, but at the end of the day, we’ve got tomorrow and we’ve got a chance to win the series still. I’m I’m just wondering like how do you how do you come out flat? Like what is happening between what happened on Wednesday night to Friday night that like to me John I get it’s the players. I get that they have to they have to perform. I am not removing blame from them. But doesn’t that feel like a a coaching issue that your your players are flatfooted? Your players aren’t ready to go. Your players have terrible approaches. that just feels like the coaches were not prepping this team appropriately. Again, I get it and I can hear the comments already, Mike. Mike, it’s on the players. And I get it, but it just feels like the coaches didn’t prep them. It feels like the culture is kind of this casual culture that we’ve talked about before on this show. How do you come out flat, not hyped, not excited, not thrilled? How do you come out and lay an egg like this against the A’s? Right. I I think if you’re going to bring up the coaching, then I think you need to bring up the prep that goes into facing a team like the A’s because number one, this is not quite the same team it was when you face them and beat them six, seven times in a row, right? Um because they won all of those games earlier this year. Now, there’s been some moves. There’s been some bullpin changes. There’s been some different starters that are going to be coming out there against you. So, you can’t come in and just expect that, oh, we’re going to steamroll them again and we’re going to hit 46 home runs in a weekend series like we did two months ago when we played up here in Sacramento. So, to me, it’s just a lack of it’s got to be a lack of prep on how to handle specific pitchers, specific pitches, specific players at the dish, right? It just seems like I’m gonna copy and paste my game plan from game to game. I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing because what I’m doing is great. But when it comes to facing somebody else or preparing to play somebody else or preparing to hit against somebody else, just doesn’t feel like there’s enough prep going into that. I don’t know if that’s scouting reports. I don’t know if that’s, you know, more data that needs to be provided to them. You’d think with Ray Montgomery and being an analytical manager that that would be something that he would consider, but also Mike, at the end of the day, starting pitching was terrible. The starting pitching was awful. And I understand like the offense didn’t come through, but the fact that, you know, you come away from this game, you know, with the fact that these guys were only able to put up three, well, maybe you shouldn’t have given up 10 across across the pitching staff. So, um, usually and and more often than not, I and earlier this season, I would defend our starting pitching and our bullpen and say, “Look, they only gave up a total of four runs. The Angels should have been able to at least put up four or five to come back, right?” like a start where it’s three runs or less. Like that’s great. And that’s happened more often than not. Even with the bad pitchers sometimes, even if they don’t quite go deep into games, they still gave their pitchers or their hitters a chance to come back in this one. But, you know, to lose 10 to three and just let it get away from you, I think that is just nonsense. And, you know, like you said, it there’s it could be a coaching thing. I think it could be a prep and scouting report thing, but at the end of the day, it’s an Angels thing because we knew they were going to sweep the Dodgers and then roll into Sacramento and and maybe take two out of three and that would have been best case scenario, right? And and that’s how we all felt about it. But there’s a lot of us like they’re going to get swept and and I wasn’t part of that crowd because I thought, hey, they swept the Ace twice this year, you know, three, four games in a row in both both of those series. But of course, you know, they win one out of three and that’s just not good enough with the way that they were playing earlier in the week. Thanks for making Lockdown Angels your first listen of the day coming up Saturday. How about you just hit commandV, command C, command V. If you’re on Windows, control C, controlV, because it was copy and paste, and we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about Saturday’s game coming right up. Everydayers, if you haven’t checked out Price Picks, you need to do that. It’s the daily uh fantasy platform that lets you turn your football predictions into real rewards. Preseason obviously is here. Uh John and I are 49er fans. They got a preseason victory. I know it means nothing, but a Jake Moody field goal is always a good thing because that guy was terrible last year. Now trying to build up. I get it. He’s still on the team. He’s still on the team. We’ll talk about that later. Uh but is there is there a pick on prize picks for how many field goals he’s going to miss this season? Cuz I’m taking the over. Yeah. College football’s also on the way. I love college football. It’s a perfect time to lock in your seasonl long more or less picks for the 2025 football season all before week one kicks off. 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You’re going to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Again, promo code locked on MLB to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Price picks run your game. Jake Moody puts me in a moody. Thanks for making Lockdown Angels your first listen of the day. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, where it’s your team every day. Let’s take it to Saturday, where I alluded to it earlier. felt like a whole copy and paste of Friday night’s game where Kikuchi from the night before uh copied and pasted his performance onto Tyler Anderson. That’s our first takeaway from Saturday’s game. Lots of pitches, lots of foul balls, and lots of walks. In fact, Anderson walked the leadoff guy in the bottom of the first, and that cost him. Two batters later, he gave up a three-run home run to Colobby Thomas. Anderson walked the leadoff hitter again in the bottom of the second. and the bottom of the third. So, in case you’re keeping score at home, three consecutive innings started with a walk from Tyler Anderson. In the third, he walked three. And now that to be fair, there were a couple of mis calls by Lance Barksdale. Those walks were followed by a two-run single in that inning. And we argue that Anderson should have been out of the inning, but he’s had so many innings like this this year that it it really comes back to a couple of things, Mike. He’s not throwing strike one. He’s falling behind hitters. And as frustrating as the umpires can be, we’re not the only ones to have to deal with bad umpiring when and and in this case Anderson hurt himself in this game. The fourth inning was the first time he had a one, two, three inning and he was out by the start of the fifth inning down four to one. He gave up four earn runs, five walks, and he had 85 pitches. Here’s what he had to say after the game. He said, “I had a hard time repeating my delivery.” And this was the second game in a row where the bullpen would need to get 15 outs. Now, when he talks about repeating his delivery, maybe you don’t need to do that little wiggle kick as much anymore, my friend, because that looks hardly repeatable even when you’re having a good day, right, Mike? Yeah. My guess, John, is that Anderson, he’s going to be a free agent obviously at the end of the year, and I think he’s going to be a non-factor wherever he goes next. And that’s frustrating to me because the Halos could have traded him. They could have received something for him, but they’re going to get nothing for him. And he’s not doing anything for this team. And I know he had back stiffness. Felt like that back stiffness was still with him on Saturday. I mean, why is he out there if he’s not able to repeat his delivery? That might be why he’s not able to repeat the delivery is he might be tight. And even Gooby said on the TV side that he was struggling to start the inning and then you could see him getting warmed up again, but it was almost a complete reset every time he went back out there. and and that’s why he was missing the strike zone because his delivery was not repeatable and he was not using the same release point every single time. And so it’s just frustrating because this is second half Tyler Anderson. This is the third year in a row that we’ve had to deal with second half Tyler Anderson. And it’s it’s just irritating that he’s still on this team and we have done nothing with him. And I guarantee you he’s going to be on a different team next year and he’s going to fall flat. I don’t think he’s going to be fantastic. I think he’s going to be this guy, right? And it seems like all the guys that the Angels have had on their team, whether they DFA them or they don’t resign them and they go off to another team, it seems like other teams don’t really want them because these are not attractive pieces to have on your team. And Tyler Anderson, I get when we signed him, it was a bit of an attraction because he had such a great year with the Dodgers. And I would argue that last year wasn’t a bad year. He was an all-star obviously, but it’s the second half that’s always been the issue for him. and why he’s surprised that he sucks in the second half is beyond me because this is the third year in a row that he’s had struggles. The problem is is that these struggles started before the second half, Mike. And so it wasn’t even like we got the best of Tyler Anderson for the first three months of the season like we did last year in 2024. But here’s the thing, you mentioned, you know, they they probably should have traded him and gotten something for him. I don’t think they could have moved him. I honestly don’t think that he’s worth a hoot. I don’t think he’s worth a single A relief pitcher. You know what I’m saying? I don’t think anybody would want to give anything up to have Tyler Anderson. Even Even the Cubs, they traded for Michael Soka. He gets hurt in his very first start. Well, he throws a lot harder than Tyler Anderson. He’s also more injured than Tyler Anderson. So, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about how other teams might feel about Tyler Anderson, look at the fact that the Cubs traded for Sroka, got two and a thirds innings out of him, and now he’s on the IIL. and they knew what they were getting. Yeah. They still overlooked Tyler Anderson. So, I think at this point, so many teams are just aware of who he is and what he does and what he doesn’t do. Yeah. At the end of the day, the second takeaway here was that the bullpen also copy and paste. They did exactly what they did the night before Ryan Zephr John took over for Tyler Anderson in the fifth inning. He immediately gave up a leadoff home run. Stop me if you’ve heard that before. He walked the next batter. He ended up getting out of the inning and he ended up going two innings. Gave up a run on on two hits. He struck out three. Luis Garcia followed win a full inning and Connor Brogden entered in the eighth going backto back nights and he gave up two runs after walking the leadoff hitter and another hitter. Both of those walks came around to score. By the way, Conor Brogden DFA off the roster on Sunday. Uh before I get to that point, Andrew Chaffen entered for Brogden, got the final out of the eighth inning, but Connor Brogden, they and of course they called up Jose Fine to take his place on the 26th man, but Brogden DFA off the 40man. Chance he doesn’t end up back in the organization. I’m surprised by that. Are you? I’m very surprised. But here’s why I’m surprised. because they’re playing Manata and Renhifo over Christian Moore and all of the conversation with Ray Montgomery is he’s going to be here for a long time and so he’s going to have his opportunities and we want to we want to play these these veterans and get them at bats and have them help us. But then you DFA Connor Brogden who was a rock star in the Dodger series and is somebody you can count on in the back end of this bullpen and I’m not opposed to Jose for me and I like Jose Fine but you’re going to bring him in and maybe not send Zephr John down because Zephr John might need to work on some things like it it just feels very confusing and very convoluted like what what’s the strategy? Oh that’s right there isn’t one, right? Like there’s not a strategy here. It’s just warm bodies that can help us to get through innings. I’m really shocked though that Connor Brogden isn’t going to be on this team moving forward. Maybe he goes to the minor leagues. I doubt it. I think another team will probably grab him. Yeah, they 100% would grab him because he’s been an anchor piece for the Angels this season. I understand that he went back toback nights and so he probably wasn’t going to throw on Sunday, but again, you have the option of moving guys around. Uh so I’m just really shocked that it was Connor Brogden who was let go from the team. Maybe he clears waiverss. Maybe he stays uh with the Angels and goes to Triple A. But I don’t know, man. At this point, I I don’t think if I was him, I’d appreciate the fact that I was straight up let go from the team in DFA. Uh third takeaway, the Angels offense. Mike really pathetic on Saturday night. Just one run on five hits through eight innings in this one. And man, it was a frustrating Saturday night. They did score another run on two hits in the ninth inning, but that was it. They were way behind already. And when they got runners on before the ninth, they either ran themselves out of the inning, like in the top of the second, Neto had a RBI single, but he was thrown out trying to stretch it to a double, or they simply just don’t make contact and strike out like in the top of the eighth. two walks with one out, the next batter strikes out and they just keep repeating the same pattern over and over again every single game. And and that’s what happened on Friday and it’s what happened on Saturday. Again, it’s copy and paste from the pitching to the offense up and down this 26-man roster right now. Yeah. Final takeaway from Saturday is Tadosio, he passes the uh the fan eye test on defense. He gets great jumps. He He’s where he needs to be when he needs to be there. I think he makes the defense better. Joe Adel’s back in right field. Comparo, I know he’s hurt, but he’s not out there and he really struggled in in the outfield. But we’re going to do a deeper dive on Bryce Diodosio tomorrow on Locked on Angels. Jeff Fletcher had a great article about him and it talks about what he’s brought to this defense, but it also talks about how Ward and Adele have had to adjust to him because Teodosio has been where he needs to be, but he’s also been where he doesn’t need to be. And so we’ll talk a bit more about him on tomorrow’s show. But that’s the final takeaway, John. It was just a back-to-back pathetic games by the Angels. And luckily, the Sunday game was was much much better. And we’re going to talk about that on our third segment. Yeah, it’s just talk about, you know, deflating like letting the air out of the tires, man. Especially coming off that big series. Now look, the Padres’s, they were swept by the Dodgers. So, you know, we we did their dirty work for them uh during the week and got them into first place, but but then they blow it and now they’re two games back. So, uh it wasn’t a great weekend for Padres’s fans either. But that’s the thing, Mike, is these are the games that you have to win. And I know we would have said that earlier in the season against the A’s because these are the games that you have to win, right? You have to beat the A’s. And I know you can’t go sweeping every team every single time, but the fact that you just weren’t able to walk away with two out of three in this series, I think is just such a just a missed opportunity at the end of the day because you had all the momentum like you said from Wednesday. Where did it go? Did you lose it in the air for the 45minute flight that you had from from Orange County to Sacramento? because it just doesn’t make any sense to me for these guys to come out looking so flat and so maybe maybe that’s it. They’re maybe they were exhausted from that Dodger series of trying to come back and win things and you know using every bit of strength that they had to get through it and try to beat this juggernaut of a team. Um but yeah, it was it really was a a World Series hangover, wasn’t it, for the Angels this past weekend. Every day’s August 26th is officially FanDuel Futures Day. It’s a brand new holiday they created for football fans who live for bold predictions and preseason hunches. For 24 hours, FanDuel is giving you deals on NFL season predictions. So whether you’re calling your MVP or you’re eyeing a long shot for the division or maybe you want to crown your Super Bowl champ in week one before it even kicks off, this is your moment. Visit FanDuel right now on the app today and start planning your futures bets because futures day is one day and one day only and you can win big because you’re a smart fan. FanDuel, play your game. Sunday was a bit of a different story. The Angels won 11 to five, ninth uh their ninth extra innings win of the season. Boy, that’s a narrative difference from years past, isn’t it, Mike? The fact that they’re actually winning games in extra innings. Every time over the last gosh, what four years that they went to extra innings, it was like, “Oh no, this is not going to turn out great.” Uh, but it was a very different story on Sunday. The first takeaway here was that the Angels got their first lead of the weekend thanks to Joe Adell. That Joe Adele stock just keeps rising and rising. And Christian Moore and that was great to see. The first uh lead came in the first inning. Joe Adell had a three-run home run and he did it on the first pitch. Adele has hit 12 of his 26 home runs this season on the first pitch. So just that ambush swing to get it done. And it was a no doubter, too. It was just like, “Oh, that’s that’s gone.” And then, uh, they got their second lead in the top of the fifth. Christian Moore hit a two-run single, and it was the lead that they would hold until the bottom of the sixth inning, right, Mike? Yeah. Second takeaway is Adele Moore gave the Angels their second lead of the weekend. It came to the top of the tenth after a walk to Mike Trout and Taylor Ward. Joe Adel singles up the middle to score the uh the the sixth run of the game for them. They were up six to five at this point. was three for five with four RBI’s. Then Hoppy has a sacrifice bunt moving the runners over. Yeah, how about that? I like that move. I actually thought that was a great move. They were questioning it on the TV side. They’re like, I wonder when the last time he bunted. I’m like, that was a good move. He was 0 for four. So, he’s like, you know what? I’m just going to put down a bunt. And he did. He did it successfully. That was great. Yeah. Instead of, you know, hitting into a double play or striking out. I’d rather have a productive out. Then Christian Moore hits a ball to shortstop and they throw home. Taylor Ward’s coming home. Taylor Ward beats it and and they score another run. Moore’s the most the most hustle he showed all weekend, right? Yeah. His third RBI by Christian Moore of the game. And so that was a piece of that top of the tenth. But John, third takeaway is Angels scores six runs and bat around in the top of the tenth. After Moore knocked in that run, Ranifo comes up and hits a two-run triple. And I don’t want to skip over I know he I know he hit a triple. I don’t want I don’t want to skip over the fact that Christian Moore read that ball perfectly. You can see it. They on the replay. You can see it. He’s heading to second base and he could tell that Lawrence Butler is not going to catch it. And Lawrence Butler, somebody hit the the the trigger the trigger button. Yes, somebody hit that on on the show and he’s spinning around and looking for the ball. Christian Moore read that perfectly and he just turned on the jets once he got to second base and he was going to score whether Renheifo got a triple or not. And I loved that hustle and I loved that awareness. And then Teodosio adds a fifth run with a sacrifice fly. John, two sacrifices in this game in this inning. Fantastic. And then Zach Neto decides to put it out of reach. His 21st home run of the season. Crushed that ball, John. Three hits and three walks in this inning. And the Angels score a total of six runs in the top of the tenth. Yeah. Where was that all weekend? Right. Like Happy Gilmore. Where were you on that one, dummy? Right. I did have a I did have a good laugh, Mike, because of uh Neto’s South Park bat that he used on Friday, the uh Professor Chaos. Yep. And then he used two different bats on Saturday and Sunday. And he was 0 for four when he came up and hit this home run. He switched back to the Professor Chaos bat and hit the home run. I was like, “Hey, bro, stick with that bat cuz that’s the one. Why’d you change?” I know. This isn’t this isn’t slow pitch softball. Quit changing bats. Stick to the one that works. Right. Hey, the third takeaway was that the Angels got a starter into the sixth inning for the first time all weekend. And it was Jose Soraniano, right? Five and two/3, eight hits, and five runs. He walked one and struck out three. But he surrendered three home runs in this game, which is very unusual for him because he had only given up 11 home runs uh in in addition to those three this season. and it was the most uh home runs he’s given up since uh there was a twogame uh home run game uh once in July and once in April. So even then when you get a not great start, the Angels had to climb back into this one because it was tied up 55 and you get out to a good start with Joe Adell hitting the three-run home run and Christian Moore adding on and then Soraniano uh just gives it right back. So e even even then Mike he it wasn’t a good start and so again all all week long the Angels have just not got great starting pitching and I think that’s starting to become a huge issue at least a glaring issue and it’s not going to work to work out too well for them uh for the remainder of the season if they you know have designs ongoing anywhere which they say they do they’re competitive they want to play meaningful games they’re obviously competitive but you didn’t do anything about the starting rotation so obviously you don’t know what you’re doing. All right, get me to the uh the fourth takeaway, the good stuff. John Kennley Jansen, he shows us what if what if the Angels were competitive and were battling for a playoff spot because he is so big in big moments and he was big on Sunday in the ninth inning. Ninth inning he allows a single and a walk which is something that we’ve had Dodger fans jump into our mentions and say when we signed him, hey, watch out because he’ll have a couple of innings where he gives up a few hits and then he’ll shut it down. And then he did. John Shay Leers strikes out. Brent Rooker strikes out. And he struck him out, John. Not on his cutter. Yeah, it was on his slider. I That’s what I was going to say is I like the way he got it done because they were either laying off or fouling off the cutter. And he was like, “Fine, you know what I’m going to do? Just swing at your shoe tops.” Yeah, exactly. I loved that. He only had six strikeouts with his slider all season. Had two in the bottom of the ninth on Sunday against the A’s. And then he finishes the inning by getting Lawrence Butler to foul out. John, I I just I just love that he’s got he’s got grit, man. And that’s what’s so frustrating about this team and their lack of competitiveness and not being in this race because it’s not going to be a matter of them blowing saves because Kennley Jansen when he gets into that ninth inning, that 10th inning, whatever inning they need him to be in, he just does an incredible job of shutting down the opponents. even when he makes the mess himself, he knows how to get out of it. And that’s what you need in the playoffs. That’s what you need as you’re trying to make a playoff run. And so that’s the bummer about this team because they could have potentially taken two out of three and moved closer to the 500 mark and maybe continued the co the talk of being able to get to the playoffs and sniff that third wild card spot, but they’ve they flushed that away a few times and I felt like this weekend was the final flesh of their opportunity to get anywhere near that third playoff spot. Final flush. Trademark the final flush here on Locked on Angels, courtesy of the Super Halo Bros. Final flush right there for your final takeaway of this weekend series. Hey, thanks for making Locked on Angels your first listen of the day. Make sure you subscribe to Locked on Angels on YouTube so you don’t miss all of this great Halo content, including the best postcast in the biz with Gavin Carlson live after every game right here on the Locked On podcast network where it’s your team every day. Hey, be sure you give us a follow on Twitter, Lockdown Angels and Super Halo Bros on Twitter and Instagram. Whether you’re watching or listening, wherever you’re watching, come on over to today’s show on YouTube and get in the comments section. We’d love to hear from you. We’ll do we always do we read everything and we just got to do our best to respond and every now and then we uh get to get to all the comments and then, you know, sometimes we’ll get to some of the comments, but we do read everything. We always appreciate your thoughts. Mike, what do we have on deck for Tuesday’s show? Well, I teased it already, but Bryce Teodosio is helping this defense be better. But Ward and Nadell have had to adjust to him because there’s been moments where he’s been right where he needs to be, and then there’s been moments where he’s been in the way. And so, Jeff Fletcher has a great article about that. We’re going to share that article with you tomorrow on Locked on Angels. All right, looking forward to that conversation. Until then, my name is John and that’s my brother Mike. And my name is Mike and that’s my brother John. Thanks for being here with us everybody. And we’ll see you back here on Tuesday. Final Flesh. [Laughter]

How did the Los Angeles Angels follow up their sweep of the Dodgers with such a terrible performance against the A’s? On Today’s Locked On Angels, the Super Halo Bros. give you EVERYTHING you need to know about this weekend series, including how the pitching failed to deliver any quality outings, while the bats fell asleep until the last game on Sunday. Zach Neto, Jo Adell, and Christian Moore helped salvage the series on Sunday, while Neto achieved another 20-20-20 season over the weekend, solidifying himself as the future of the Halos. We’ll give you the lowdown on this series and our thoughts on the Halos’ flat performance on today’s show.

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