Mariners gaze into Angels pitching abyss, abyss gives up 11 runs

With the Trout-Ohtani-Rendon trio theoretically fueling a stars-and-scrubs offense for years to come, the Angels turned their attention to doing everything possible to acquire pitching, epitomized by his famous “Oops, All College Pitchers” draft. In 2021. Tonight showed how little progress the organization has made on that front, while also showing why the gap between the Mariners and their AL West rivals should continue to grow in the coming years.

Tonight the Angels debuted their 2019 third rounder Jack Kochanowicz. Way back in 2019, prepster Kochanowicz was one of my favorites as a potential day two sign; The Mariners took a load of college arms that year, including third rounder Levi Stoudt, who has been in and out of the organization. Kochanowicz is throwing very well in Double-A, but as tonight showed, the bigs are a completely different beast, as the Mariners welcomed Kochanowicz very indecently, with seven hits in just three innings. Tagged him for five runs (four earned). And not just hits, but hard hits:

That spicy single by Josh Rojas scored the first run of the game after J.P. Crawford led off the game with a ground-rule double. The Mariners probably could have done more damage had the first five hitters reached safely against Kochanowicz, but noodle-armed Mickey Moniak managed to deliver a perfect throw to Rojas trying to reach third on Cal Raleigh’s single. . They also had some good luck when Luis Guillorme threw a ball into the stands that could have been an easy double play on Ty France, allowing another run to score, but still, by the time the inning ended. , the Mariners were already up 4–0 thanks to a two-out, two-run single by Jorge Polanco, who has been consistently good on this road trip.

After a quiet second inning, the Mariners got another run in the third on Cal Raley’s home run, their first of two runs on the day:

The Mariners’ batters did a good job of chasing down Kochanowicz’s fastball, which was hard (97 mph) but was on the plate and hittable. When he tried to make changes to his low secondary stuff, they got the jump on him too, laying on pitches outside the zone and forcing him out at the plate, and most importantly, he got the better of his above-average strikeouts. Kept away from being able to access change; He threw only four. It took Kochanowicz 60 pitches to make it through just three innings, ending his debut abbreviated.

Following Kochanowicz was Kenny Rosenberg, who made his season debut after working hard this entire season in Salt Lake with the Bees. Utah has been nicknamed The Beehive State as a nod to the industry and work ethic of its people, and Rosenberg has certainly taken that work ethic with him; The Angels’ poor pitching kept Rosenberg at bay for a while, leading to an 11–0 loss as the Mariners continued their lead. J.P. Crawford officially moved the game into laughingstock territory by greeting Rosenberg with a two-run home run in the fourth, scoring Mitch Haniger, who had walked.

But JP wasn’t done torturing Rosenberg, he took a single to score Jorge Polanco in the sixth and moved Jonathan Klaas to second, both of whom had singles. Cal Raleigh then decided to end the game early:

According to MLB’s Jason Bernard, this is the first time in the Statcast era that a batter has hit a home run from both sides of the plate with an exit velocity over 110 MPH. According to Alex Meyer, Cal is the first player to homer twice from both sides of the plate in a three-game span since Jeff Devon of the Angels did so in back-to-back games in 2003. In my opinion, Cal is great and the Mariners should give him all the money.

Meanwhile, Luis Castillo held the Angels from scoring more than six, and the bullpen made sure the shutout would hold. If we can pick apart the performance where Castillo went six innings and gave up no runs on four hits while striking out five, it’s that while he wasn’t super efficient with his pitches, he did run some deep counts. Was staying and issuing two free passes. Castillo remained super fastball-heavy against the Angels, throwing it 56% of the time; There seemed to be some extra movement on the pitch (and in fact, it had +2 on its vertical break tonight), plus it was slightly (.5 mph) hotter on average, and when it swung a lot If it was there, it also had fodder hitters. was at the plate (54% of swings), it also ran away from him at times. The new, slower slider didn’t strike out too many, but he did get a fair number of called strikes (he threw 4 of 11) and had a few weak-contact outs.

The Mariners had built their lead so well that they could lift Castillo in the seventh and insert Mike Baumann to get some low-leverage work as he looks to reignite his big stuff and scattershot command. Continues to work. Baumann got some help on another amazing catch from Julio, his second of the game, and he had bad luck on a ball that bounced off his foot, which Rojas could not collect in time to catch the speedy Moniak at first. Could. This was followed by some self-inflicted damage by being hit by a pitch and a walk to load the bases with two outs, bringing up Nolan Shanuel who lined out. Bauman’s potential remains very attractive, but he certainly needs more time to lead the organization in the right direction.

Less sexy in terms of stuff, but a quiet hero of low-impact appearances, Eduard Bazardo homered in the eighth and worked a quick 1-2-3 finish that ended with a slider dropped to the opposite side. What happened with Logan O’Hoppe being swept away helplessly. Batsmen’s box. He came back in the ninth and immediately struck out pinch-hitter Keston Hiura, catching him again on a slider before pinch-hitter Willie Calhoun walked. A generous strike three call for Zach Neto, who decided not to argue his fate like Kevin Pillar earlier, as the latter was ejected from the game, and a Luis Guillorme lineout to tie the game an easy, easy, Sundar finished for 11-. 0 win.

We have many disappointments with the Mariners, but one thing that can’t be debated is the success they have had in developing both starter and reliever pitchers. With apologies to Kenny Rosenberg, I’d also prefer the Mariners’ low-leverage mop-up guys to anyone developed by the Angels pitching department. It made me think of one of my favorite, most schadenfreude-y Reply Guys tweets of all time:

Although I disagree with the respected Rangers fan that “they’re nothing”, I agree: that’s not fair. Although in the grand scheme of things, it seems like there is a bit of unfairness on the side of Mariners fans, especially against the Angels, no?