Freeway Series Comes to Anaheim (36/81)

The Los Angeles Dodgers made the trip down the I-5 to Anaheim last night and came in guns blazing, but couldn't hold the 5-0 lead after 2 innings to a 8-5 loss in a perfect example how these two teams seasons are going.

The Dodgers opened the season as the hottest team in baseball with the hottest hitter in Matt Kemp. After narrowly missing the NL MVP award last season, Kemp entered the season with 50-50 aspirations (50 home runs and 50 stolen bases), and after his hot start, it looked like he might actually make it. Unfortunately, due to a pulled hamstring those aspirations have faded away along with the Dodgers World Series hype.

In the past two months, the Angels have the best record in baseball and the Dodgers lead in the NL West is slipping. Luckily for the Dodgers, they got off to a hot start and have plenty of time to stop this skid before it becomes really alarming, but it goes to show how hard it is to maintain success over a 162 game season. Like my dad always says, the hottest teams in the beginning aren't usually the hottest teams in the end. If you get on a roll towards the end of the season and make the playoffs, you have a better chance to win the World Series than if you win 40 games in a row in April-June.

The Angels got off to one of their worst starts ever at the beginning of the season, but are doing great now. The key for the rest of the season will be to maintain that pace while not worrying about catching the red hot Texas Rangers. The problem with trying to catch the Rangers is that it becomes discouraging because of how good they are. The Angels have the best record in baseball since May 8, but are still 5-6 games out of first in the AL West. You can't explain that.

Rather than try to catch the Rangers, you're looking to make it to one of those 2 while card spots and win the 1-game playoff. The next round actually favors wild card winners most because, under the new wild card format, the first 2 playoff games of the best of 5 series are played at the wild card winner's field.

If the Angels catch the Rangers this season, I'll be surprised. I sure hope it happens, but I think its more realistic to aim for the Wild Card at this point.

Bullpen Fails as Rangers Run Over the Angels (26/81)

Dan Haren threw a decent game for 5 innings, but the strong right-hander threw too many pitches for his manager's taste, and the bullpen came in to give away the game to the Texas Rangers.

The Angels lost 7-3 to the Rangers in the final game of the series and fell back to 4 1/2 games out of first place in the AL West. However, we need to look on the bright side: when the Rangers came to town on Friday, they had the possibility of leaving Angel Stadium with a 9 1/2 game lead in the AL West. The fact that the Angels are only down by 4 1/2 games seems almost miraculous after their atrocious start to the season. The Angels are now 6th in the Wild Card race behind only the Cleveland Indians and the beast that is known as the AL East.

I found out some new information regarding the revised Wild Card today that strikes me as odd. We already knew that there would be two Wild Card teams this year, but what most of us didn't know was that the winning team from the one-game Wild Card playoff game would be rewarded with two straight home games against a defending division winner. The compensation is that the final three games are at the division winner's home field, but is still unfair because the division winner has the potential to be down 2-0 in a 5 game series without ever playing a home game. There's no way that the rules are going to change again this year, but I talked with Angel's beat writer Bill Plunkett who says not to expect this to be something we see in future seasons. EVERYONE, except maybe teams in the Wild Card race, are against this idea.