I always enjoy beating the Angels. Maybe it’s because they’ve given the Yankees so much trouble over the years when guys like Garret Anderson, Howie Kendrick and Chone Figgins drove us mad. Or maybe it’s because Mike Sciosca’s teams are supposed to be the kings of small ball and beat us with their scrappy play.
So it was especially sweet to win this weekend’s series against them, despite the addition of a healthy Pujols and his 500 home runs and despite the endless string of injuries to our players. (Solarte has a sore shoulder? Gardner has a sore foot? Billingsly, who was up in the majors for exactly five minutes, is on the DL already?)
Last night’s game was fun – tense, but fun. Everybody was saying how “off” Tanaka was. Really? I’ll take his “off” any day. True, he actually walked people and hit a batter, but how about all those strikeouts and how he never unravels? I think he’s turning into our ace, I really do, and when he pitches I have so much confidence that we’ll win the game. Of course, we couldn’t hit their flame thrower, but in the end we didn’t have to. We walked and passed-balled our way to enough runs to get it done.
And now we have the red hot Cano to look forward to. He’s been tearing it up for Seattle, so I’m sure he’ll be just as tough against the Yanks. It’ll be great to see him again, if bittersweet.
It was definitely nice to win this series! Now if we can win a series without humiliating ourselves for one game (PINE-eda, most lopsided loss in new Stadium history) we’ll be on-track! Seriously though, I am liking how this team is shaping up. I am always cautiously optimistic at the beginning of every year (I am a romantic) but after the first month I feel good things are happening. Good starting pitching (not counting Friday’s game, which was my first game at the Stadium this year. Oy!), surprising new contributions, bullpen hasn’t been bad. Let’s hope success follow us into May!
Hey, Darren! Long time. Nice to see you here. Yes, I think there’s reason to feel optimistic about this team. There are a lot of strengths to go along with the holes that still need filling, and other teams in our division have bigger problems.