{"id":125110,"date":"2025-06-23T12:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/125110\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T12:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:57:10","slug":"series-preview-red-sox-at-los-angeles-angels-located-in-anaheim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/125110\/","title":{"rendered":"Series Preview: Red Sox at Los Angeles Angels, located in Anaheim"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a disappointing series in San Francisco, the Red Sox<\/a> head to Anaheim to face the Los Angeles Angels. These will be games 80, 81, and 82 on the season. It\u2019s not early: it\u2019s midseason. And despite a hot couple weeks the Red Sox enter at 40-39, just a single game over .500. They\u2019re (barely) on the outside looking in for a Wild Card spot. This is a team that can either push onward or fall apart for the fourth straight year.<\/p>\n

The Angels are 11-9 in June. Boston is 12-7, losing two-of-three to these same Angels at Fenway Park. However those games were all winnable for the Red Sox. Two absolutely crushing pitching performances negated very strong nights for the bat that climbed almost all the way back. <\/p>\n

Sure, they have Mike Trout. He\u2019s better than any two Sox put together probably. But the Angels are well under water in terms of run differential (321-375 vs Boston’s 372-357). <\/p>\n

Roman Anthony is now up. You can basically throw out whatever batting line he\u2019s showing right now. Unless he\u2019s a flop in the majors then his true talent will look nothing like this and any day could be the first day he\u2019s fully online in the big leagues. This might not happen until 2026 for all we know but he\u2019s looking better at the plate. He\u2019s drawing walks. He got that first home run. And he\u2019s making loud outs. <\/p>\n

This is his Statcast batting page:<\/p>\n

\"Roman<\/p>\n

Roman Anthony\u2019s Statcast Batting Chart<\/p>\n

Statcast<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of red. He\u2019s not a qualified hitter yet and small sample sizes etc etc etc. But he\u2019d be just outside of some very elite players if this holds true.<\/p>\n

Take, for instance, Shohei Ohtani.<\/p>\n

\"Shohei<\/p>\n

Shohei Ohtani\u2019s Statcast Batting Chart<\/p>\n

Ohtani is obviously at the top of the scale. Heck, he kinda breaks the scale (and is also a lefty so no, I\u2019m not using the Yankees<\/a>\u2019 Great Toe as a comp). But Anthony is in the shadows of greatness looking at his exit velocity and barrels. If Ben Franklin asked him \u201cis there greatness in you<\/a>?\u201d Roman Anthony would deliver.<\/p>\n

Walker Buehler may be running out of rope. He doesn’t look like he\u2019s improved since 2024 despite finally being healthy again. You have to feel for a guy needing almost two years to heal and then a third year to maybe try and pitch again? There have been flashes both in the 2024 Worlds Series and across his starts this year. If Hunter Dobbins hadn\u2019t hit the IL with, gulp, elbow soreness, Buehler could have been the odd man out with Richard Fitts returning. He couldn\u2019t have asked for a better matchup than Kochanowicz though. If he\u2019s even slightly decent the Sox should be able to put runs on the board.<\/p>\n

Garrett Crochet won\u2019t get a chance to win at home but he can win on the road! Tyler Anderson, nicknamed<\/a> Ricky F. Or Mr. Duck, was knocked around for 5 runs in 4.1 innings at Fenway Park in the walk-off win.<\/p>\n

Richard Fitts makes his return from the IL for real this time. He only lasted one inning against the Angels a few weeks ago and hopefully now that he was able to rehab and return and not be called upon as an emergency starter he\u2019ll be back to his old self. He faces Kikuchi who gave up 3 runs in 5 innings on 8 hits and 5 walks. This was the game the Angels win in extra innings. <\/p>\n

In sad news, but maybe to Boston\u2019s advantage, Ron Washington has stepped aside from managing for health reasons. Their lineup clearly isn\u2019t carrying them. Their pitching is all over the place. Maybe his dedication to the players was a secret sauce. <\/p>\n

Probable Pitching Matchups<\/p>\n

Monday June 23: Walker Buehler (5.95 ERA \/ 5.34 FIP) vs. Jack Kochanowicz (5.38 ERA \/ 5.69 FIP)<\/p>\n

Tuesday June 24: Garrett Crochet (2.20 ERA \/ 2.59 FIP) vs. Tyler \u201cMr.\u201d Anderson (4.56 ERA \/ 3.57 FIP)<\/p>\n

Wednesday June 25: Richard Fitts (4.71 ERA \/ 5.87 FIP) vs. Yusei Kikuchi (3.01 ERA \/ 3.88 FIP)<\/p>\n

When\/Where to Watch<\/p>\n

Monday June 23: 9:38 PM ET on NESN, MLBN<\/p>\n

Tuesday June 24: 9:38 PM ET on NESN<\/p>\n

Wednesday June 25: 4:07 PM ET on NESN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a disappointing series in San Francisco, the Red Sox head to Anaheim to face the Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2390],"tags":[2198,290,291,422,5,439,181,176,1165,446,3223,26287,289,774,56,3224,3222,4,1321,1320,3227,285,5558,1646,286,173],"class_list":{"0":"post-125110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-angels","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-angeles","10":"tag-angels","11":"tag-at","12":"tag-baseball","13":"tag-exclude-from-stn-video","14":"tag-front-page","15":"tag-in","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-la-angels","18":"tag-laangels","19":"tag-located","20":"tag-los","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-los-angeles-angels","23":"tag-losangeles","24":"tag-losangelesangels","25":"tag-mlb","26":"tag-monster","27":"tag-over","28":"tag-preview","29":"tag-red","30":"tag-red_sox_news","31":"tag-series","32":"tag-sox","33":"tag-the"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114732796960292462","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}