Rangers drop Giants, keep Dodgers safe with Aaron

Josh Hamilton hit a two-run homer for the Texas Rangers Sunday, giving his club a 2-1 win against the San Francisco Giants, along with retention of the Henry Aaron Award. Because the Aaron remains in the American League, the Dodgers are safe with their lead in the Henry Aaron standings.

Josh Hamilton was a hero Sunday for the Texas Rangers, and, indirectly, the Dodgers (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The Dodgers are a long way past dodging trollies, but they did dodge a bullet Sunday, when the Texas Rangers took down the San Francisco Giants, 2-1, to keep the Henry Aaron Award.

With a win in that game, the Giants would have captured the series and the Aaron, setting themselves up for a chance to surpass the Dodgers on top of the standings for the interleague traveling trophy.

Instead, the Dodgers remain the top club in the Aaron, and they stand to remain that way for some time, especially with the Aaron now living in the American League.

The Giants remain second to the Dodgers in the Henry Aaron standings this season, though the Giants have played nine times this season for the award, breaking their tie at eight with the Dodgers. The Dodgers still have the better overall performance, going 15-10 in Aaron games with one title, six defenses in seven attempts and 22 games holding the title. The Giants are 14-14 with one title, four defenses in six attempts and 18 games holding the title.

Not incidentally, the Angels have made a strong run with the Aaron since the start of July. After taking the Aaron in a three-game sweep of the Rangers July 3-5 in Arlington, the Angels ripped through four strong title defenses before the Rangers took it back from them by winning two of three last weekend in Anaheim. However, the Angels did a lot with their run, going 14-5 with four title defenses in five attempts and holding the prize for 16 days to reach the thick of the standings in their only turn this season with the interleague traveling trophy.

The Rangers held the Aaron by the skin of their teeth last week in a four-game split with the New York Yankees. The Rangers only held the Aaron because no team can lose that prize in a split series. However, the Yankees did take the Harmon Killebrew Award from the Rangers, who also won that prize last weekend in Anaheim. The Yankees beat the Rangers in the total runs tie-breaker for the Killebrew, 35-19.

Josh Hamilton may be a pox on the Angels, but he is a hero today for the Dodgers after hitting a two-run homer in the sixth inning Sunday to give the Rangers their deciding victory over the Giants. Hamilton hit the bomb against right-hander Mike Leake, acquired by the Giants from the Cincinnati Reds in a deadline deal earlier in the week.

With the Rangers, by the way, Hamilton has a .742 OPS, which is about how he produced with the Angels in 2013 (.739) and last year (.745). He has five homers and 16 RBI in 118 plate appearances, which include eight walks and 31 strikeouts.

The Rangers are defending the Aaron Monday through Wednesday at home against the Houston Astros, who, for all their resurgence this season, have been no factor in the Aaron or Dick Allen Awards.

It remains that the Rangers lag in the Henry Aaron standings, though their two titles this year are the most for any club. They need a couple more weeks of title defenses before they're pushing on the Dodgers.

After Dipoto leaves, Angels nab Aaron, Killebrew

The Angels broke out their bats during the July 4 weekend in Arlington, scoring 33 runs in a three-game sweep of the Texas Rangers. We won't say for sure that the Angels players were glad to see general manager Jerry Dipoto go, but we're pretty sure they weren't upset to see him leave.

Angels slugger Albert Pujols reportedly had words with general manager Jerry Dipoto shortly before the latter resigned (Marianne O'Leary [UC International crop]/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

It's easy to say the wheels are coming off the Angels' season now that general manager Jerry Dipoto has left the building after a much-reported dust-up with the fellows in baseball uniforms. It's much harder to say the wheels are staying on.

We prefer to do things the hard way, so we're going in that direction. An air clearing like this isn't the worst that can happen with a baseball club that's really been flat-lining all season, just winning a couple and then losing a couple, ad nauseum, all the way from the start of April until now.

Not a bad idea to roll a head or two under the circumstances, and Dipoto ended up rolling his own.

In a short run of games since Dipoto gave way on July 1, the Angels have performed well, demolishing the Texas Rangers three straight in Arlington during the July 4 weekend by a combined score of 33-8.

Incidentally, the three-game sweep gave the Angels possession of the Harmon Killebrew Award
and the Henry Aaron Award.

It's easy to say Dipoto's departure must have made the Angels bats happy, at least immediately. How this plays out in the long term is anyone's guess, though it's hard by now to believe the players were thrilled with their former general manager.

One can imagine how it went over with the players when the guy in the polo shirt – the guy who didn't provide a lead-off hitter, or a clean-up hitter, or even a No. 6 hitter, the guy who traded away the old second baseman and didn't replace him, the guy who worked harder at poor-mouthing Josh Hamilton than at replacing him – when that guy went into the clubhouse and told players that the real problem was that the coaches weren't giving them good enough information. One can imagine.

But we don't have to imagine, because the reports tell us that what happened is what we would imagine. At least we know now who's the boss, and it isn't Mike Scioscia, the 15-year manager who's still under contract through 2018 at $6 million per year. Scioscia won the power struggle with Dipoto when Hall-of-Fame-bound first baseman Albert Pujols got his back. When the GM enters the clubhouse to run a meeting with the players and the most expensive and accomplished player on the team basically tells him to do his own job better, it's over.

So, the boss is Pujols, and everyone kind of knew that the moment he signed that 10-year deal for $240 million before the 2012 season. Angels owner Arte Moreno has much more invested in Pujols than in Scioscia or Dipoto. Now Pujols leads the American League with 25 home runs, his credibility is high and the general manager went across him. Cross Scioscia? Part of the general manager's job. Cross Pujols? Probably not the general manager's job.

Compare the situation with what happened last year in Oakland. Reports say a huge conflict arose between their general manager, Billy Beane, and their best player, Josh Donaldson, with manager Bob Melvin in the middle. After the season, Beane traded Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays. Beane has said the conflict did not motivate the trade, and it doesn't even matter. The Athletics will never be so invested in a player that Beane can't trade him for any reason he wants.

By the reports, Dipoto was dissatisfied at how basic scouting information was filtering through the coaching staff to the players. By the reports, Pujols told Dipoto that the roster this year just isn't as good as the roster last year.

We can't judge if Dipoto was right, but we definitely can judge that Pujols was right. The most obvious problem is a dreadful lack of depth in the batting order. When your lineup has Pujols and Mike Trout, but you still have one of the worst offensive teams in the Major Leagues, that's almost an achievement. Even after their hitting explosion in Texas, the Rangers still are 11th of 15 American League teams at 4.10 runs per game.

One doesn't have to be a player to see that the front office has failed his team. Time will tell, for example, if young left-hander Andrew Heaney is ultimately a good return for popular and productive second baseman Howie Kendrick. So far, though, time is saying the Angels are significantly downgraded at second base.

In so many ways, the Angels front office performed terribly throughout the Josh Hamilton saga. When you commit $125 million to a known and admitted drug addict, a constructive approach to a relapse has to be part of the equation. But the Angels didn't see it that way, because they never thought they were committed to $125 million. They thought Hamilton's drug problem would get him suspended without pay, the way performing enhancing drugs (PEDs) are, and that they could weasel out of his contract if he relapsed. When they learned otherwise, they were petulant and indignant.

We don't suppose for one second that Moreno's chaotic leadership isn't behind all of this, but Dipoto got in front of the microphones and played the heavy, and that couldn't have gone over well with players who are sympathetic to Hamilton. The Angels management reacted to Hamilton's problems with outrage, as if a drug addict's relapse somehow defied the moral and physical laws of the universe.

The Angels already knew Hamilton would miss the start of the season with shoulder trouble, even before we all learned of his relapse. Yet, they did next to nothing – they signed Matt Joyce – to account for Hamilton's absence in left field and the middle of the batting order. The problem isn't that the Angels don't have Hamilton, who OPS-plussed 114 last season. They can replace that with someone about as good as Juan Rivera used to be. The problem is that they don't have anybody.

So, the Angels figured all along that they would be rid of Hamilton's contract with a relapse, they rooted openly for him to be suspended because of the relapse, when they didn't get their way they sent Hamilton back to the Rangers for almost nothing and, all this time, they didn't make a serious bid to replace him. And they have a big whole in their lineup now because of it.

One day a couple of weeks ago, the general manager entered the players quarters and told them he was going around the field manager to fix the club's mediocre performance. If you're a player on that team, maybe the general manager can go to hell. The Angels happen to have a player who can tell him that.

We're not saying Pujols told Dipoto where to go. All we know is that Dipoto went somewhere.

Royals surge shows no trouble for Angels

The Angels might lament that they didn't last longer in the American League playoffs, but it's hard to argue that anyone in the AL was going to beat the Kansas City Royals, who are headed to the World Series. The Angels are headed to 2015 with a strong club with a good chance of making that trip.

The Angels need a big bounce back from Josh Hamilton if their five-year, $125 million contract with him is to be vidicated (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

An old saw in sports says that offense fluctuates and defense is a constant. The saw doesn't exactly explain what happened to the Angels in their American League Division Series (ALDS) loss to the Kansas City Royals. But it's a pretty good description.

The Angels finished the regular season with the best record in the game, 98-64, and they did it with hitting. And they lost the ALDS in three games because hitting fluctuates. 

That's really all there is to it. The Angels didn't hit for three days, and they lost three games. They batted only .170 in the series and scored only six runs, despite hitting four homers. It can happen to anyone, and it happens all the time. Playoffs magnify that, but they do not make it remarkable. It's probably, indeed, more likely to happen to a good team in the playoffs than the regular season because, in the playoffs, you're not playing the Houston Astros or the Minnesota Twins. No one gets to the baseball playoffs without being good enough to win them, and that's even after expanding the playoffs to five clubs in each league.

Thus, we find no deeper meaning in the Angels' rapid playoff demise. Explanations? It's three games. The season is a marathon containing many moments, good and bad. If the good moments outnumber the bad, you win in the end. The playoffs are only a moment, and, if the moment isn't right, you lose, right now, and it's over. The End.

The flip side to all of that is the Royals, who were sky high when they played the Angels and have remained that way ever since. After sweeping the Angels in a three-game ALDS, they swept the Baltimore Orioles in a four-game American League Championship Series (ALCS). The Royals will begin the World Series tonight at home against the San Francisco Giants.

The Angels are just going to have to process all of this. It can't be easy, but it's not as if they rolled over against a club they should have beaten. As well as the Royals are playing, it's ridiculous to say anyone should beat them.

During the six-month grind, the Angels were the best team in the game, only to be dispatched in three games by a club that couldn't even win a division. Responses along the lines of "So what?" are in play here. What's not in play is any notion that there's some flaw in the club's design that make it unsuitable for going deep into the playoffs. Perhaps, should the Angels flop in the playoffs the next couple of years, we might detect patterns, but, right now, it's just three games in the dumpster.

The Angels remain an outstanding club, and they took a huge step forward in 2014. They added two very good starting pitchers to their mix, Garrett Richards and Matt Shoemaker, entirely from within their organization. Missing Richards for the postseason certainly didn't help. At the very least, a healthy Richards would have enabled the Angels to delay C.J. Wilson's dreadful Game 3 start until Game 4. Might have harshed the Royals' high a little bit, changed the energy and given the Angels a chance to come back in the series. But maybe not.

Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto should get a nod or two for rebuilding the bullpen on the fly during the regular season. That was some fine work. Bringing in Huston Street to replace Ernesto Frieri for holding ninth-inning leads gave the whole operation a new breath of competence and confidence. With offseason free agent Joe Smith around to carry the eighth, the sixth and seventh innings become opportunities for mixing and matching the limited abilities of certain relievers against the limited demands of those circumstances.

Cole Kalhoun became the regular right fielder this year, and he probably is the guy we saw. Mike Trout finally will win his MVP award. Erick Aybar and Howie Kendrick once again were the players we've been seeing for a few years. The top catcher, Chris Iannetta, is a good baseball player. 

It quickly became irksome to hear the television commentators during the playoffs talk about the greatness of Albert Pujols in the postseason when anyone with just a lick of sense knows he isn't even approximately the same guy who used to win all those big games for the St. Louis Cardinals. Pujols once was the greatest player in the game. Now, he might be one of the best five first basemen in the American League. Still a very good player. But he won't build his Hall of Fame case on his years with the Angels. That doesn't mean he won't help the Angels win, or that the Angels need to upgrade at first base. He will make the day a little better, but he will not save the day. Those days are long gone.

Going forward, the Angels have the pieces together to win the division again in 2015, but there are a couple of red flags. Josh Hamilton and C.J. Wilson each will be in his age 34 season with lots of contract left and decline almost certainly in the future. The Angels received good value in the first couple years of Wilson's deal, but he fell off badly in 2014 and now has two years and $38 million of contract remaining. The Hamilton signing can only be characterized as a grievous mistake. He has delivered almost nothing in two seasons with the Angels and he enters 2015 with three years and $89 million of contract left.

Those are two old players eating a lot of salary and diminishing the club's flexibility by that much. Word from Anaheim has it that the Angels will work their club around the edges. They certainly want to come in with a payroll beneath the taxation threshold of $189 million and, according to the estimates on baseball-reference.com, they figure to come in around $160 million if the pick up all their contract options and go through arbitration with all who are eligible. So, they have a little room.

The club is set in the outfield with Calhoun in right, Trout in center and (lamentably) Hamilton in left. They've got Pujols at first, Kendrick at second base and shortstop Aybar all under contract for 2015. They've also got catcher Iannetta under contract and his backup, Hank Conger, is due for arbitration.

The only pending free agents of much interest are utility infielder John McDonald and reliever Joe Thatcher, both of whom would be well worth signing and neither of whom figure to be expensive. McDonald earned $850,000 in 2014 and he's well worth a million. Thatcher is a hard-throwing left-hander who would really give the Angels a lift if he's healthy. Questions about Thatcher's health and effectiveness, as well as the direction of the market, might take signing him out of the question for the Angels, but they do need a left-handed specialist out of their bullpen.

The Angels still have the pieces, and the question now is whether the pieces will fit again. A productive fitting of the piece would include left-hander Tyler Skaggs continuing his development and being around the whole year, and there's still the matter of how Richards will come back. But it's all there. It's still just a matter of fitting together.

Moreno: LA's unsung baseball hero in 2014

After taking the heat for over-reaching his baseball operation to saddle the Angels with a poor club in 2013, Angels owner Arte Moreno doesn't receive enough praise for reversing his own course and giving the baseball people room to operate in 2014. The Angels are back to being an elite club this season, and Moreno's new patience has a lot to do with it.

Angels owner Arte Moreno has left his baseball club to his baseball people in 2014, and the results are obvious (public domain image).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

They don't give an annual award for the most reviled person in baseball across Los Angeles. If they did, they'd have to retire it, anyway. Frank McCourt would win it every year. Still.

If, however, active participation were a requirement, then it's hard to imagine a more likely winner in 2013 than Angels owner Arte Moreno.

As of one year ago right now, no rhetorical task across the game would have been much tougher than defending Moreno's leadership of the Angels' baseball operation. In short, he was an ignoramus and a busy-body, the proverbial  – and all-too-real – rich guy with a baseball club for his plaything. These guys never understand the game because they think baseball is like other sports, replete with game faces and outcomes dictated by brute force.

Moreover, Moreno is a marketing guy who saw his club as a marketing project because, you know, when you're a hammer, everything is a nail. Thus, Moreno reached past his baseball people for two consecutive offseasons, signing the likes of Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson and Josh Hamilton to $500 million worth of free-agent contracts while the organization's player development operation languished as one of the least promising across professional baseball.

It wasn't really until last season that the entire mess came home to roost. Pujols produced his worst season ever before finally going on the disabled list with a plantar fasciitis in his left foot, the Angels made the characteristic error of thinking Hamilton could whisk into a new position (right field) just because he was on a deal worth an annual $25 million, the club decided to sign Joe Blanton  instead of giving those starts to Garrett Richards, and a disjointed club turned in a disjointed season.

The Angels finished 78-84, their worst season since 2001, when they finished 75-87 in Mike Scioscia's first year as the club's manager. The Angels that had been built by Bill Stoneman had run their course, and the new direction was not promising. Some fans believed Moreno should respond with something big, like firing Scioscia, or firing general manager Jerry Dipoto.

But Moreno did nothing of the sort. In his darkest moment as the Angels' owner, Moreno instead did something really big.

He pointed the finger at himself. In interview after interview across the national media (since he deals so seldom with the local media), Moreno made himself accountable, said he's the owner and it's on him. Moreno couldn't be led into selling out his high-priced players for under-producing. He refused to pin it on his manager, and he said outright that he wanted to give Dipoto's systems a chance.

So, when the 2013 season ended amid speculation that Moreno might actually eat the last five years of Scioscia's contract, there was, indeed, no news. And throughout the offseason, there was little news – just a couple of trades and a couple of changes on the coaching staff, the kind of events to characterize an ordinary offseason for any club. But there was no news, no headline news, no big initiative designed to scream across the media. 

It was, in fact, rather a dull offseason, an offseason of baseball people making baseball decisions. The owner kept his hands off.

Now, if we didn't want to give Moreno credit for seeing the light, that would be easy to do. Surely, it wasn't an attractive proposition for the Angels to go into the big free-agent market again, since the club opened the season with a $155 million payroll and has so much money committed to future seasons that another big contract would remove any remaining flexibility, particularly with the club angling for a long-term deal with Mike Trout. Additionally, anyone looking at the talent on this club had to know it really wasn't as bad as the 2013 season showed.

In fact, the Angels enter Wednesday's game against the Dodgers at Angel Stadium with a 67-45 record, the second best across Major League Baseball. And it has a lot to do with the fact that the owner didn't make a chaotic situation even more chaotic by going crazy on his top people. Instead of pressing the baseball operation with marketing initiatives, Moreno let the baseball operation operate a baseball club. 

Everyone around the Angels, it seemed, could take a deep breath, which is for the best because the Angels run like mad and they needed a breath. The Angels are back to playing baseball a lot like we remember from their best days under Scioscia. The focus is on players already with the club. The new guys giving new blood to the club are their own guys.

There's Richards, starting every fifth day instead of some mediocre free agent. There's Erick Aybar at his demonic best, and Howie Kendrick hitting at his best, and Trout having his best year ever, and Jered Weaver getting hitters out without his old stuff, and C.J. Cron up from the minor leagues to lend a bat, and so on.

The owner has left the club alone, and the club is responding with a fierce brand of baseball unlike any other club around the game today. No club in the major leagues is more aggressive on the bases or on the field or, for that matter, in the batter's box. 

Credit the players because they are playing, and credit the manager because he dictates how the game is going to be played, and credit the general manager because he assembles the playing roster.

But also credit the owner for allowing all of that to happen just by staying away. It's not an easy thing to do. If any of us owned the Angels, or any other club, we'd probably have our mitts all over it. Some of us might figure out when the bottom goes out that we don't know what we're doing, but you can look around sports and find plenty of owners who never get the picture. Moreno has.

A year ago, Moreno was the most reviled man in baseball across Los Angeles. This season, Moreno is the city's unsung baseball hero.

The Angels according to WAR

The statistical confection known as Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has become something of a new religion among a certain strain of baseball fans. As such, it requires a leap of faith, which some of us aren't quite willing to take. Here's what WAR says about the Angels in 2013.

According to WAR, Angels pitchers are considerably better than they were last season, and Scott Downs, in particular, is about five times as good (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).


By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The Angels have become a dangerous team since this season's terrible start, which was even worse than last year's terrible start. It remains that, at 43-45, they are well behind the pace of last year's outfit, which finished 89-73. At the rate that the Angels have won through their first 88 games, they would finish 79-83.

Again, though, the Angels started this year 15-27. Since then, they are 28-18. If they can keep playing at that 28-18 pace (a .609 percentage), they would finish 88-74, which gets them very close to the present pace for the Tampa Bay Rays, who are 50-40 and positioned for the second wild card at 90-72.

The question before us is this: Considering that the Angels, taking the first 88 games in total, are paced to finish ten games worse than they finished last year, what is that difference? How, specifically, are the Angels ten games behind last year's rate of victory?

Like many other commentators, we're intrigued by Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as a way to measure specific player contributions to winning games. Unlike many of those same commentators, who talk as though WAR should be the last word on important questions like a player's worthiness for the Hall of Fame or a Most Valuable Player award, we're not sold on WAR. We're still kicking the tires and checking under the hood.

A check under the hood involves a critique of the methodology, a critical look at the assumptions involved in working out the formula for determining WAR. Tire kicking involves putting certain questions to WAR and seeing how it answers. What follows is an exercise in tire kicking.

Baseball-reference.com (insert deep bow here) bases WAR on the assumption that a team composed entirely of "replacement" players, players of the "4A" type who are easily available to every team, would win 48 games in a 162-game major league season. Thus, a team that wins 90 games in a season would have 42 games of WAR value -- the 48 games that a team full of replacements would win, plus 42 "wins above replacement."

One legitimate criticism of WAR is that it misses by a little. One of WAR's virtues is that it doesn't miss by much. But it does miss by enough to be questionable. For example, as the Angels won 89 games last year, we would expect their WAR to total 41. Instead, by the Baseball-reference.com version of WAR, it totaled 46.3. If the Angels had won at the rate that WAR would predict, they would have finished with 94 wins, which would have put them into the playoffs. In the world according to WAR, the Oakland Athletics would have won 95 instead 94, the Texas Rangers would have won the same 93 and the Baltimore Orioles would have won 87 instead of 93. So, the Angels would have been in and the Orioles would have been out.

That's a pretty different world. So, WAR raises at least as many questions about itself as it answers about player value, and that should be kept in mind as we put it to work. It's a long way from being perfected.

It's also a lot of fun. So, back to the fun. Let's look at the Angels.

So far in 2013, Angels pitchers have produced 6.6 WAR, which works out to 12.2 WAR over 162 games. As it happens, Angels pitchers produced 4.8 WAR for all of last season. If WAR is to be believed, then Angels pitchers actually are better this year than last year, even though they rank 11th in American League ERA this year (4.23) and they ranked eighth last year (4.02).

At the end of last season, the Angels let go of Dan Haren (-0.4 WAR in 2012) and Ervin Santana (-1.3) and, essentially, replaced them with Jason Vargas and Joe Blanton. Vargas, with a 1.9 WAR so far this year, projects out to about 3.7 WAR over a full season, though we know we're not getting that because he'll miss about six weeks with a blood clot. Blanton has a -0.4 WAR, which works out to about -0.8 over the full season. Between Vargas and Blanton, the Angels would realize about 3.0 WAR over the full season, an improvement of 4.7 WAR over the combination of Haren and Santana in 2012.

C.J. Wilson finished with 0.7 WAR last year and now has 1.3 WAR in 2013, which would take him to about 2.5 over the full season. That's an upgrade of 1.8 WAR. Jered Weaver last year had 4.0 WAR and, so far this year, has 1.4 WAR, which would get him to about 2.8 over the full season. But Weaver is the reverse side of Vargas in that the former already has been injured and we might expect him to outpace the WAR he has established so far. The way Weaver is going lately, he might match last year's 4.0.

Last year, the Angels brought in Zach Greinke as a short timer and he gave them 1.4 WAR. He's pitching across town now and the Angels don't have an obvious replacement. However, Jerome Williams is good enough for WAR purposes. Last season, Williams totaled -0.2 WAR. This year, so far, he is 0.6, which rates out to about 1.2. That's an improvement of 1.4, which was precisely Greinke's contribution last season.

Ernesto Frieri last year totaled 1.4 WAR and he has 0.9 WAR so far this year, so he would come in around 1.8 for a small increase. But Scott Downs is showing a big increase, up from 0.4 WAR last year to 1.2 so far this season. He would pace out to about 2.4 WAR this year, a full two games better for a situational left-handed reliever. Even Garrett Richards works out better this season. Last year, he finished with -1.0 WAR and this year he projects to about -0.2 WAR.

Taking the next five Angels pitchers by appearances in 2013, we find Michael Kohn (0.7 so far), Kevin Jepsen (-0.0), Dane De La Rosa (0.5), Robert Coello (0.0) and Sean Burnett (0.6). They total 1.8, which would bring them in around 3.5. Compare them with the Angels next five pitchers from 2012 in appearances: Jason Isringhausen (0.1 in 2012), Jepsen (0.4), Jordan Walden (0.3), LaTroy Hawkins (0.0) and Hisanori Takahashi (-0.3). They total 0.5. So, the Angels, considering the solid back of their staff, are about 3.0 WAR better than last year.

Assuming that the discrepancies involving Weaver and Vargas will come out in the wash, the body of pitchers so far considered would come in right about 12 WAR better than last year. As to the remaining pitchers from each year, the guys who come and go, the Angels are about two WAR worse in 2013.

Position play, WAR tells us, is where the Angels really suffer this year in comparison with 2012. Defensively, in particular, WAR tells us exactly what the eye tells us. The Angels are ghastly this year. In 2012, they totaled 4.6 defensive WAR. In 2013, they are -4.7 WAR, which comes to about -9.0 over the full season. Perhaps WAR is telling us something about the relationship between pitching and defense, because the common measures tell us that the Angels pitching is worse this year, while WAR tells us that the pitching actually is better and it's the defense that's worse.

Offensively, WAR tells us that the Angels are a little worse than last year. Their offensive WAR last year was 36.7 and their offensive WAR so far this year is 17.1, which paces out to about 33. The less mysterious measurements tell us that that the Angels are more than a little worse offensively this year. The Angels are down from third in the league to seventh in runs, down from third to fifth in OPS and their OPS-plus is down from 116 to 111.

The big differences are found in individual position players, where we see enormous declines in WAR. That 12-game improvement in WAR among the pitchers is much more than offset by a projected decline of about 20 WAR among the position players.

Erick Aybar last year was 4.3 WAR and he's 0.2 WAR so far in 2013, so he paces out to a four-game WAR drop. Alberto Callaspo has dropped from 3.5 WAR to 0.0 WAR, so his decline is that large. By letting go of Torii Hunter, who had a 5.8 WAR last year, and replacing him with Josh Hamilton, who is 0.2 this year, the Angels figure to be another five WAR in the red. Albert Pujols did 5.0 WAR last year and he's 0.8 so far in 2013, a drop of about 3.5 over the full season. Mike Trout has followed last year's incredible 10.9 WAR with 3.9 so far this year. He paces out to about 7.7 WAR in 2013, another drop of three games. Were these players to maintain their WAR levels, they would end up being about 20 WAR worse in 2013 than 2012.

All of that is somewhat offset by improvements from other players. Howie Kendrick, who finished last year with 3.1 WAR, already has 2.8 in 2013 and would come in around 5.5, an increase of about 2.5 games. Chris Iannetta finished 1.4 in 2013 and already has 1.3 in 2013, so he figures to come in about 2.5, an increase of about one game. Peter Bourjos last year had 1.2 WAR and he has 1.3 already this year, so he would be about 1.2 better over this full season, except that he can't stay in the lineup. Mark Trumbo, 2.7 WAR last year, is 1.5 so far this year, so he would come out about the same. So, we see an improvement of about five WAR in 2013 among these players.

But when we go to the secondary position players, we see mostly decline. The next five Angels position players by appearance in 2012 were Kendrys Morales (2.2), Maicer Izturis (0.3), Vernon Wells (0.6), Bobby Wilson (0.9) and John Hester (-0.1). They total up to 3.9 WAR in 2012. The next five of those players for 2013 are J.B. Shuck (0.3), Brendan Harris (-0.6), Hank Conger (1.0), Luis Jimenez (-0.0) and Andrew Romine (-0.3). They add up to 0.4, which paces out to about 0.8, another drop of three games from the comparable players of 2012.

Putting it all together, WAR tells us that the Angels, over 162 games, would be going on four games worse offensively (down from 36.7 WAR in 2012 to about 33 this year), about seven or eight games better in their pitching (up from 4.8 to 12.2) and about 14 games worse defensively (down from 4.6 to about -9.0). That accounts, give or take, for the 10-game difference to the bad this year for the Angels.

Outside of WAR's suggestion here that pitching really isn't the Angels' problem, which is a little surprising, this quick and dirty study supports much of what we can plainly see by quantifing our qualitative intuitions. We could already tell that Hamilton instead of Hunter has turned out to be a bad exchange. WAR gives us an inkling of how bad. We could already see that Pujols, Callaspo and Aybar aren't as good as they were last year. WAR gives us some purchase on the extent of those declines.

In some respects, though, we're finding WAR quite hard to believe. WAR tells us that Trout is -1.3 defensively in 2013. Really? This season, the Angels are 10th in American League ERA by starters at 4.43, compared with fifth last year at 4.04. But WAR would have us believe that they get better starts this season. According to WAR, the Angels are a couple of wins better behind the plate this year. That isn't obvious.

WAR certainly is a salty concoction. It makes our discussions, like our food, tastier and more interesting, in the right amounts. In excess, it causes thirst, bloating, high blood pressure and weakening of the bones (osteoporosis), which might also characterize a good many baseball arguments that take WAR as gospel. Perhaps, WAR should be taken with a grain of salt. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it. But it’s not a good main course.

Angels have a good lineup ... out there ... somewhere

If we could tell you of a batting order that is proven to work for the Los Angeles Angels, that scores about a run more per game than their other lineups, would you like to see them try it? We have found such a lineup. Unfortnuately, you will never see the Angels use it when they're healthy. But they can get close enough.

With Peter Bourjos back in the lineup for the Los Angeles Angels, we might suggest a lineup that could work (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Not including the games played in National League parks, the Angels have used 40 different lineups in their first 72 games. Their most frequently used lineup has been their most successful lineup.

And, yet, it is a lineup we will never see again when the Angels are fully healthy.

The reason, of course, was that they missed center fielder Peter Bourjos for a full two months with a hamstring strain and played most of their games without him. When Bourjos returned to the lineup on June 10, Mike Trout moved back to left field and J.B. Shuck moved back to the bench.

That was just part of the impetus for going away from the successful lineup. There were others. But, first, here is the lineup that has worked best, just naming the players and their positions in batting order:

Erick Aybar (shortstop), Trout (center field), Albert Pujols (first base or designated hitter), Mark Trumbo (first base or designated hitter), Josh Hamilton (right field), Howie Kendrick (second base), Alberto Callaspo (third base), Chris Iannetta (catcher) and Shuck (left field).

The Angels are 10-5 using that lineup. Those games produced 74 runs, 4.93 runs per game, a bit up from the club's average of 4.47. In four other games, the Angels used an identical lineup, except with Hank Conger instead of Iannetta catching. In those games, the Angels are 2-2 with 24 runs, an average of six per game. Put the two together, and that basic lineup is 12-7 with 98 runs, an average of 5.15 runs per game.

In all other games, we all know, the Angels are 20-33. They’ve scored an average of 4.23 runs in those games, which is beneath the American League average. They’re a whole different club.

Why that particular lineup should work as well as it has is a bit of a mystery. Aybar has only a .269 on-base percentage in 136 plate appearances from the leadoff position. Shuck, hitting right before Aybar most of the time in that configuration, is a good hitter, but a light hitter. It's not like the lineup has the obvious elements of a winner.

But there it is, scoring 5.15 runs per game. It was, in fact, the basic configuration for the Angels during the last seven games of their eight-game winning streak from May 18-26. Further, the lineup three times scored five or more runs in losses, and two other times it scored four runs in losses. It has been a highly effective lineup. With any kind of pitching, the Angels could have won three-fourths of their games using this lineup.

Some in the statistical community say lineups don't really matter. We agree that lineups don't necessarily add up, and we have said it before. That’s not the best way to look at it. Lineups either work or they don't work, and the reasons why may be conjectured, but they may as well be left to the baseball gods. The important matter is to find a lineup that works, then keep riding it.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia is not doing that, and he has his reasons. We don't like to second guess managers. They have so much more information than we have that we don't even know what their decisions really are.

Scioscia has taken to moving Aybar down in the order, pushing Kendrick's hot bat up a notch and moving Hamilton into the two hole. By the way, watching Hamilton dog the back end of two double-play ground balls he hit in a 3-2 loss to the Seattle Mariners at the Big A Tuesday night makes one think he should come out of the lineup altogether until he decides to run those out. But that’s another issue. As it is, Scioscoa moved Hamilton down to the seventh spot for the Angels’ next game, a 1-0 win Wednesday against the Mariners.

No one here is suggesting that Shuck should play instead of Bourjos. But here is a suggestion. Go back to that successful basic lineup, but with Bourjos in the nine hole instead of Shuck. Oddly enough, though understandably, the Angels have not tried that configuration.

Bourjos is a much better hitter than Shuck (.824 vs. .672 in OPS), though Bourjos strikes out a lot more often and walks a lot less.  However, Bourjos has an advantage of .381 vs. .329 in on-base percentage, and his ability to reach base from the bottom of the order could give the Angels a nice dimension to compensate for Aybar's ineffectiveness as a leadoff hitter.

It would be fun to see how it works. The Angels might get a few more wins out of it.

Vargas vexes Sox: Angels 6, Chicago 2

Are the Angels changing before our eyes? Or is the Chicago pitching that wild? The Angels walked six times, twice with the bases loaded, in their 6-2 win Sunday against the White Sox. After walking 16 times in the last two games, the Angels now have more walks than the American League average, which is highly unusual under the field management of Mike Scioscia.

Howie Kendrick had two hits Sunday, the most for the Angels on a day when they walked twice with the bases loaded (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Share Alike-Attribution Generic 2.0 license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The game: May 19, Chicago at Angels, American League. Chicago entered the game 19-22, tied for fourth (and last) place AL Central, five games behind Detroit and Cleveland. The Angels entered 16-27, fifth place AL West, 12 games behind Texas.

The pitchers: Chicago, Jake Peavy, right hander (5-1, 2.96). Angels, Jason Vargas, left hander (2-3, 4.03).

The result: Angels 6, Chicago 2 (Baseball-reference.com box score).

Summary: The Angels got a very well-pitched game and Chicago did not. On the second of those, much credit should go to the Angels, who ran very aggressively and walked twice with the bases loaded to set up their victory.

The pitching: If everything else is equal, one doesn't expect Angels starter Jason Vargas to outduel White Sox starter Jake Peavy. But everything else wasn't equal Sunday afternoon, because Peavy was facing the Angels and Vargas was facing the White Sox ... That, and Vargas pitched beautifully in his seven shutout innings. He threw 114 pitches, and he changed speeds off the previous pitch on 94 of them. When he threw the same speed, he changed location. Vargas also pitched outside of the strike zone to good effect ... The White Sox waited for his fastball all day, and that's mostly what he threw, but he kept them so off balance that they couldn't get good swings at him ... If this game seemed different for the performance from Vargas, it was. Angels starters were 9-20 with a 5.08 ERA entering the game ... Reliever Ernesto Frieri walked the bases loaded in the ninth and gave up one run on a sacrifice fly, but he entered with a 4-1 lead and a man on in the eighth, so he still picked up his ninth save ... Peavy was going for his fourth straight win, but he walked five hitters in six innings, three of them in the fourth inning, when the Angels scored two runs. Of the five batters Peavy walked, two of them scored, and there were two instances when he walked in runs with the bases loaded ...

The hitting: After scoring nine runs Saturday, the White Sox reverted to form and hardly touched Angels starter Jason Vargas, who limited them to four hits in seven shutout innings ... The White Sox were zero-for-seven batting with runners in scoring position ... The Angels drew six walks after walking 10 times Saturday ... Get this! With those 16 walks in their last two games, the Angels have 140 for the season, which is actually above the American League average of 137 walks. The Angels, who have finished in the bottom half of the American League in walks in every season under the field management of Mike Scioscia, except his first, now are tied with Minnesota for seventh in American League walks. Last year, when the AL had 14 teams instead of 15, the Angels ranked 12th with 449 walks ... Angels right fielder Josh Hamilton, who entered the game seven-for-15 with two homers lifetime against Chicago starter Jake Peavy, was one-for-three with a single against him Sunday ... The Angels won this game even though Mike Trout didn't score, which is rare. The Angels now are 4-18 when Trout doesn't score a run, and 13-9 when he does ...

The base running: The Angels had Chris Iannetta on third and J.B. Shuck on first with no outs in the third. Erick Aybar hit a ball into the right-field corner. After White Sox right fielder Alex Rios slid to keep the ball from the fence, he threw to second baseman Jeff Keppinger, who was lined up for a throw to third. Shuck ran off first so fast that he was around third and halfway home when Keppinger let Rios' throw through and it reached White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez. With the play happening behind him as he reached second base, Aybar risked making the first out of the inning at third as he bolted to the next corner. He lost. Aybar was about halfway between second and third when Ramirez got the ball to third baseman Conor Gillespie, and he was out in an easy rundown ...

The fielding: Angels shortstop Erick Aybar dropped a back-handed short hop against Chicago's Jeff Keppinger in the third, enabling the batter to reach with a single ... White Sox center fielder Alejandro De Aza mishandled J.B. Shuck's single in the third, enabling Angels catcher Chris Iannetta to move from first to third ... Shuck made a nice running and sliding attempt to rob Conor Gillespie in the seventh inning, but the ball dropped just past the top of Shuck's glove for a leadoff double. One out later, Angels center fielder Mike Trout made a beautiful diving catch to his left, taking extra bases and an RBI from Jeff Keppinger. It's a tribute to Trout's reputation as a fly catcher that Gillespie wasn't already almost at third base. Instead, Gillespie waited, tagged and took third while Trout got up and threw. The Angels got out of it when the next batter, Tyler Flowers, grounded out ...

Strategic moves: Playing in the American League means you never have to hit for your pitcher. Managing the Angels means you have only one relief pitcher who is truly reliable. Put them together, and it's easy to see Angels manager Mike Scioscia's general game strategy with regard to his pitchers -- stretch that starter out as far as possible, then get the ball to Ernesto Frieri as soon as feasible. Sunday, Scioscia brought Frieri in for his second four-out save in as many days. After Jason Vargas gave him seven shutout innings, Scioscia gave the ball to Dane De La Rosa  and Scott Downs for one out each before giving the ball to Frieri with two out and a man on second in the eighth inning of a game the Angels led, 4-1. Frieri didn't have his best day, walking three hitters and giving up a run in the ninth, but he picked up his ninth save.

What now: The Angels improved to 17-27, still fourth place in the AL West, still 12 games behind Texas. The White Sox fell to 19-23, remaining tied with Minnesota for fourth place in the AL Central, six games behind Cleveland. With Sunday's win, the Angels have brought themselves even with the White Sox all-time. The series, which reached its 52nd birthday on Saturday, is tied, 351-351 ... The Angels are taking Monday off before Seattle drops into Anaheim for a two-game series that starts Tuesday. The Angels will pitch right hander Jerome Williams (2-1, 3.05) for the 7:05 p.m. PDT start. The Mariners will counter with recent Dodgers right hander Aaron Harang (1-4, 7.30), who probably wouldn't be helping the Dodgers even if they'd kept him ... The White Sox begin a three-game series at home against Boston Monday night. Right hander Dylan Axelrod (1-3, 4.27) is pitching for the White Sox against Boston left hander Jon Lester (6-0, 2.72).

Walking to a win: Angels 12, Chicago 9

Such an unlikely way for the Angels to win a game. They walked 10 times, Alberto Callaspo drove in five runs and they came back from a 4-0 deficit to defeat the Chicago White Sox, 12-9, Saturday at Angel Stadium. The Angels won for the first time in Joe Blanton's nine starts for them, and he wasn't very good.

Angels third baseman Alberto Callaspo led the way Saturday with five RBI (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Generic 2.0 license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The game: May 18, Chicago at Angels, American League. Chicago entered 19-21, tied for fourth AL Central, four games behind Detroit and Cleveland. The Angels entered 15-27, fourth place AL West, 12 games behind Texas.

The pitchers: Chicago, Hector Santiago, left hander (1-2, 2.33). Angels, Joe Blanton, right hander (0-7, 6.46).

The result: Angels 12, Chicago 9 (Baseball-reference.com box score).


Summary: We always say that anytime you watch a baseball game, you might see something you've never seen before. The Angels walked 10 times Saturday. Maybe we've seen that before, but possibly not, as the Angels are in the bottom half of the American League in walks every year since Mike Scioscia became their manager. Anyway, the Angels needed all of those walks to overcome a 17-hit onslaught by Chicago, which remains the worst offensive team in the AL.

The pitching: When the closer gives up a three-run homer and still gets a save, you know this particular game is not about pitching. Angels closer Ernesto Frieri did exactly that, coming into a 10-6 Angels lead with two out in the eighth and two men on, meaning the tying run was on-deck. On the second pitch he threw, Frieri gave up a base-clearing bomb to Hector Gimenez, the reserve catcher who towered above all other hitters on a day when everyone was Stan Musial. However, Frieri finished off the eighth, then struck out all three hitters he faced in the ninth for his eighth save of the year ... Angels starter Joe Blanton courted disaster for three innings and finally won her heart in the fourth. Blanton gave up two hits in each of the first three innings and left them all on base. In the fourth, he walked a hitter, gave up a hit, then, with two out, hit Chicago's Alexei Ramirez with a pitch. This time, the dam broke. Alex Rios hit a hard ground ball off the glove of third baseman Alberto Callaspo, who leaped into the air going to his left. Two runs scored on the double. On the very next pitch, Adam Dunn singled to right, driving in two more ...

The life savers in this game for the Angels were middle relievers Robert Coello and Dane De La Rosa, who combined for 2 2/3 shutout innings to get the club through a fifth-inning jam and carry them through the seventh with a 5-4 lead. Coello entered for Blanton with one out and the bases loaded in the fifth, then struck out Ramirez and the hot-hitting Rios, both swinging at hard, sinking fastballs. The right hander now has pitched seven innings over five appearances without giving up a run ... The Angels brought in Garrett Richards, recently converted to the bullpen, for the second day in a row to pitch the eighth inning. It didn't work out. Richards gave up four runs (though two came on the homer against Frieri) in 2/3 of an inning. His ERA ballooned from 4.78 to 5.63, almost a full run. Being fair to Richards, two of the four hits he allowed were infield hits ...

The White Sox got no pitching from anybody. Sox hurlers faced 45 hitters and turned only 22 of them into outs. The other two outs for the Angels came when Albert Pujols hit into a double play and Mike Trout was caught stealing.

The hitting: When Alex Rios bounced his double high off the leaping glove of Angels third baseman Alberto Callaspo to trigger a four-run inning in the fourth, probably no one figured Callaspo would be the man to lead the Halos out of their resulting 4-0 hole. But Callaspo put the ball into the air to hit two sacrifice flies and a three-run homer, leading the club with five RBI ... The switch-hitting Callaspo hit the ball hard from each side of the plate. Batting right-handed, he took Chicago left fielder Dayan Viciedo all the way to the wall in the second inning, hit a line-drive single to left in the fourth, then greeted Sox reliever Donnie Veal, a lefty, with a three-run homer to left in the seventh. Batting left-handed, Callaspo hit a sacrifice fly to the front of the track in right field, driving in Mark Trumbo to give the Angels a 5-4 lead in the fifth. He didn't hit the ball as hard from the left side in the eighth, but he got the job done with a sacrifice fly to left field ... Of the ten different players who took at-bats for the Angels Saturday, all of them walked at least once, except for Callaspo, Albert Pujols and Howie Kendrick. But Callaspo drove in five runs, while Pujols and Kendrick each had two hits ...

If the Angels are to make anything of this season and it turns out to have started with this game, then we might look back on Trumbo's fourth-inning homer as the turning point. The Angels offered this to reporters: After Chicago scored four in their half of the inning for a 4-0 lead, they were telling each other to just get one back and keep playing. Then, Trumbo led off with his homer to left. You wouldn't expect a guy who homered to bring his 15-27 team within 4-1 in the fourth inning to be especially juiced, but Trumbo's excitement coming around the bases was hard to miss, especially his hard hand slap with third base coach Dino Ebel as he headed for home ... Then again, we shouldn't be too surprised about Trumbo. This guy is a really good player in many ways. He plays a nice first base, he's adequate in the corner outfields and he can handle designated hitter, so he gives his manager a lot of flexibility, in addition to extra base pop ... With two RBI Saturday, Trumbo has driven in 17 runs in his last 19 games. He's only eight-for-42 in his most recent ups, but he makes the hits count. Of his last 18 hits, 13 are for extra bases (six doubles and seven homers) and, as we've said, he drives in runs ...

Another interesting player for the Angels right now is this pop-gun corner outfielder, left-handed hitting J.B. Shuck. When club owner Arte Moreno isn't looking because he's so fixated on adding glitter to the roster, Shuck is the kind of guy who an astute baseball person sneaks onto the team. Houston gave up on Schuck during the winter and cut him loose, apparently because he has absolutely no power -- just seven homers in 2,463 professional plate appearances, no homers anywhere since 2010 and no homers at all above the Class AA level. He's a singles hitter all the way ... But he has a career minor league batting average of .301 in 2,299 plate appearances, never batted lower than .292 in any of his five minor league seasons, and never had a minor league on-base percentage lower than .366. Two interesting figures for Shuck: his career minor league on-base percentage is .382, and his career minor league slugging percentage is .381. He has more walks than strikeouts every year except one. In his last two seasons of Class AAA ball, he played 223 games, walked 95 times and struck out 50 times ... And he runs well, though probably not well enough right now to be an effective base stealer. In those two years at Oklahoma City (Pacific Coast League), Shuck was 32-for-51 in stolen base attempts, 62.7 percent. He needs to be around 75 percent to make the successful steals worth the outs they cost. But he's only 25 and, perhaps, a little instruction could make him a threat to steal ... And he has handled himself well in left field and right field for the Angels ... Anyway, Shuck had another nice game Saturday, two-for-four with three RBI, including a two-run double. He's batting .306 ... Could go on and on here. Lots to like about this player.

The White Sox, of course, had their hitters on this day ... Shortstop Alexei Ramirez and designated hitter Paul Konerko each had three hits ... The day turned two other White Sox into .300 hitters. Alex Rios kept a 13-game hitting streak alive with a two-for-four day, pushing his batting average up to .302. And Dayan Viciedo was two-for-three, pushing his average up to .303 ... However, Adam Dunn kept a five-game hitting streak alive, and it hasn't even made him a .200 hitter. Dunn is eight-for-22 (.363) on his streak, bringing his season average up to a lusty .173 ... The big bopper for the White Sox was backup catcher Hector Gimenez, a switch hitter who was four-for-five with a three-run homer.

The base running: One never knows what base running like this actually costs a club, but, for example, Chicago's Alexei Ramirez only went from first to second on a single to right field by the next hitter, Alex Rios, with one out in the first inning. The Angels right fielder, Mark Trumbo, played deep against Rios and never had a chance to catch the ball. There was absolutely no danger of Ramirez being thrown out at third and, with one out, he has to get there. As it turned out, the next two hitters, Adam Dunn and Paul Konerko, both struck out swinging against Angels starter Joe Blanton to end the inning. But if Ramirez were on third, particularly during Dunn's at-bat, that would have dictated a change of approach for the hitter and the pitcher, perhaps with a different result. The White Sox lamented after the game that they didn't make enough of their early opportunities, but here was a case where they didn't even make an early opportunity ... Ramirez did go from first to third without a throw on Konerko's two-out single to center in the third ...

Albert Pujols can't be feeling good with that plantar fasciitis in his left foot, but he doesn't stop running. He hustled out a double to short right in the fifth, enabling himself to easily score the tying run for the Angels on Mark Trumbo's double to the wall in right center ... Mike Trout always likes to get out and run for the Angels, and one can see why. In the first, Trout singled, only to be erased on Pujols' double-play grounder. In the third, Trout walked, only for Pujols to hit into a force play to end the inning. In the seventh, Trout walked and, this time, he tried to steal second with Pujols batting. But he was thrown out. Then, Pujols struck out looking. Who knew that it would be the start of a five-run inning for the Angels? In the eighth, Trout led off with a walk, moved from first to third on Pujols' single to right, then scored on a double by Howie Kendrick.

The fielding: For all his offensive prowess Saturday, Alberto Callaspo isn't what he used to be at third base for the Angels, and it's no wonder he's splitting the position with rookie Luis Jimenez. Callaspo struggles going to his left and coming in on balls. Saturday, three plays -- only one of them easy, granted -- got the better of him. In the second, he couldn't get enough zip on his throw to turn Dayan Viciedo's chopper into an out. In the third, he misplayed an easy roller by Alexi Ramirez down the third base line into a hit. And in the fourth, there was that high bouncer by Alex Rios that skipped off Callaspo's glove for a two-run double ... Angels right fielder Mark Trumbo mishandled Adam Dunn's single in the fourth inning, but with two out and runners on second and third, those two runs were going to score, anyway ... Trumbo took over first base for Brendan Harris in the seventh and made a short diving stop to his right against Tyler Greene to end that inning ...

The White Sox removed Dunn from first base in the fifth inning because of a bad back. His replacement, Jeff Keppinger, made nice diving stop to his right in the sixth, turning Chris Iannetta's sure leadoff single into a ground out ... While going four-for-five at the plate, White Sox catcher Hector Gimenez also let by two passed balls and couldn't block a wild pitch. Fortunately for him, none of those plays ultimately resulted in any Angels scoring.

Strategic moves: How does strategy play into a game like this? Either the pitchers get guys out, or they don't. By the numbers, the Angels are an average offensive team in the American League, and they scored 12 runs in eight innings of hitting. The White Sox have the worst offensive numbers in the league, and they scored nine runs ... To start the seventh, leading, 5-4, Angels manager Mike Scioscia made a couple of defensive substitutions, moving Mark Trumbo from right field to first base, removing Brendan Harris from first base, and taking Josh Hamilton off the bench and putting him in right field. Trumbo immediately rewarded Scioscia with a nice play at first base. Trumbo walked in the bottom of the seventh and scored on Alberto Callaspo's three-run homer, then Hamilton followed Callaspo's homer with a one-out single and later scored on J.B. Shuck's double. In the eighth, after the Angels already expanded their lead to 12-9, Hamilton drew an intentional walk ... Did these moves by Scioscia help? They certainly didn't hurt.

What now: The Angels improved to 16-27, still fourth place in the AL West, still 12 games behind Texas. They snapped a three-game losing streak and avoided their worst 43-game start since 1976, when they were 15-28. The Angels are 7-7 against the AL Central and 9-20 against all other clubs ... The White Sox now are 19-22, still tied with Minnesota for fourth (and last) place in the AL Central, but now five games behind Detroit and Cleveland ... The Angels will try for a split in this four-game series Sunday (12:35 p.m. PDT) at Angel Stadium. Left hander Jason Vargas (2-3, 4.03) will throw for the Angels. Vargas is 2-0 with a 2.91 ERA in May. The White Sox will answer with right hander Jake Peavy (5-1, 2.96), who is going for a fourth straight win for the first time since the second half of the 2009 season ... Saturday was the anniversary of the very first game the Angels and White Sox every played against each other. On May 18, 1961, before 3,740 at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, the White Sox prevailed, 6-4.