The Los Angeles Angels made a relatively unexpected decision on Sunday when they called up one of the team’s top pitching prospects for his first major league start. And while it wasn’t the longest outing, right-handed pitcher George Klassen still gave Angels fans a glimpse at what he could bring to the rotation in the future. <\/p>\n
Klassen, Los Angeles’ No. 4 prospect for 2026 on MLB Pipeline<\/a>, seemingly was a last-minute pivot<\/a> for the Angels after Sunday’s scheduled starter, right-handed pitcher Ryan Johnson, was scratched<\/a> due to illness. That set the stage for the 24-year-old’s big league debut against the Seattle Mariners. The young righty tossed 2 2\/3 innings, giving up two runs on three hits and five walks, while striking out four in a game the Angels eventually won 8-7 in 11 innings.<\/p>\n The high walk total stands out in the box score, but that could likely be at least partially attributed to the natural nerves and jitters associated with an MLB debut. Klassen recorded his first out in the majors when Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh weakly grounded out<\/a> on a first-pitch changeup. The 24-year-old then followed that up by collecting his first big league strikeout<\/a> when he got three-time All-Star Julio Rodr\u00edguez to whiff on an 89.7 mph<\/a> slider. <\/p>\n What’s next for Angels’ George Klassen in 2026?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Angels made a relatively unexpected decision on Sunday when they called up one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2390],"tags":[291,5,1165,446,3223,774,56,3224,3222,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-665922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-angels","8":"tag-angels","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-angels","12":"tag-laangels","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-angels","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangelesangels","17":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116356165428908476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665922","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=665922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}