It seems like an absurd thing to say about a team that features Mike Trout, masher of baseballs, but the Los Angeles Angels are punchless. And it could cost them a crack at the postseason.
After falling 9-2 to the Cleveland Indians on Sunday, the Angels sit at 65-65, in third place in the American League West and 3.5 games off the pace for the second wild card.
A sequence in the first inning Sunday perfectly encapsulated the Angels' offensive futility. Kole Calhoun led off with a single, but Indians starter Josh Tomlin promptly picked him off at first base. Trout then smacked a triple but was stranded at third after Albert Pujols struck out and David Murphy flied out.
The Halos have now lost three straight and eight of their last 10. And while the pitching has wobbled at times, the source of their troubles begins and ends in the batter's box.
Since the All-Star break, Los Angeles has scored the second-fewest runs in the Junior Circuit, ahead of only the last-place Oakland Athletics. Worse still, its team batting average and OPS rank dead last in all of baseball over that stretch.
Even Trout has tailed off a tad, posting a respectable but not spectacular .266/.378/.504 slash line with seven home runs since the Midsummer Classic.
But other than Calhoun—who has 10 post-All-Star dingers and an .820 OPS—Trout has gotten precious little support.
Pujols, Trout's resurgent veteran bash brother in the first half, has an anemic .231/.267/.410 slash line since the break. C.J. Cron (.810 post-All-Star OPS) has chipped in, but the rest of the Angels lineup has vacillated between mediocre and awful.
The results are right there in the standings, where Los Angeles is tumbling faster than a share of Enron stock circa 2001.
Not only are the defending AL West champs back to .500, but they're also staring up at the Minnesota Twins, who sit 1.5 games out of the wild-card race, as well as the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees, who hold the two wild-card slots.
That's a lot of clubs to leapfrog. Yes, it's still (barely) August; there's time for a turnaround.
The next couple of weeks, though, could be make-or-break.
After a three-game set against the A's in Oakland, the Angels open a nine-contest homestand Sept. 4 that includes three-game series against the Rangers and division-leading Houston Astros sandwiched around a showdown with their Southern California rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers—the first-place team in the NL West.
If the Halos can thaw their bats, that could be a prime opportunity to gain ground. If they keep swinging icicles, on the other hand, they could be buried well before October.
"I've been feeling good at the plate the last couple days," said Trout, who went 4-for-4 Sunday and finished a home run short of the cycle at Progressive Field, per MLB.com's Alden Gonzalez. "Obviously the results aren't there, but that's baseball. You have to stay positive. Once you start thinking negative and trying to change a bunch of things, that's when you get in trouble."
Really, that's the prescription for the whole team—don't panic; don't press; take it one game at a time. Of course, that's easier said than done with the schedule winding down and the losses piling up.
No matter what, the 2015 regular season won't match the Halos' strong 2014 showing, as Matt Snyder of CBSSports.com noted:
[The] Angels went 98-64 last year. In 2015, they surpassed that loss total before the end of August. That hot streak in July that landed them in first place for a bit is long gone and this team just feels lifeless.
It was July 22 when the Angels won for the 17th time in 20 games, pushing their record to 54-40. They had a two-game lead over the Astros in the AL West and were up nine games on third-place Texas.
Since then, the Angels have been dreadful.
Rebounds can happen quickly. Maybe Trout's big day against Cleveland is a prelude to a torrid streak that will carry his club over the finish line. If anyone's capable of doing that, it's the reigning AL MVP and the best all-around player in the game.
If the season ended Sunday, though, the Angels would watch the playoffs from their couches—and the only thing they'd be hitting would be the buttons on the remote.
All standings and statistics current as of Aug. 30 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.
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