Angels 35-28 Twins 27-32 Last time the Twins and Angels squared off, they split a 4 game series at the Big A. Coincidently enough, all 6 pitchers in this upcoming series pitched in that early May series. The Twins are 5 for their last 10 and and have lost 9 out of their last 14. The Angels are off to a good start in June and have gone 5-1 (thanks in part to playing bad teams, but shhhhh). Honestly, the teams are probably semi evenly matched. The Angels are going to have to put runs on the board and have only scored 27 over their last 7 games, compared to the Twins who have logged 37 runs over their past 7 games. Know your foe: Twins - who’s hot (last 7 days): Eduardo Escobar .500 OBP, 4 home runs, 11 RBIs Brian Dozier .448 OBP, 1 home run Eddie Rosario .424 OBP, 4 home runs, 8 RBIs Weather Forecast GAME 1 Garrett Richards (3.25 ERA) v. Lance Lynn (5.46 ERA) Friday, June 8th @ 5:10PM Pitcher vs. Batters Notable Stats Summary: Richards gave up 3 runs on 5 hits over 5.1 innings last time he faced the Twins. It was the ONLY game so far this year in which he has not given up a walk. In his last 4 starts, Richards hasn’t made it out of the 6th inning and he has a 3.60 ERA with 24 Ks and 15 walks over 20 innings. Seriously, cut down on those walks dude! Pitch Arsenal: Lance Lynn gave up 4 runs on 8 hits in 4.2 innings when he last faced the Angels. Aside from a scoreless start against Houston 2 starts back, he’s had a rough time this year and has given up 5 or 6 runs in 5 of his last 6 starts. Pitch Arsenal: Verdict: Richards did alright against the Twins last time and should be sharper in this outing. Lynn has been terrible yet somehow held the Astros scoreless. Anything can happen but this should lean Angels. GAME 2 Tyler Skaggs (3.27 ERA) v. Kyle Gibson (3.54 ERA) Saturday, June 9th @ 11:10AM Pitcher vs. Batters Notable Stats Summary: Tyler Skaggs is at or near a career best in WHIP, ERA, walks allowed, K rate, etc. You get the drift. He’s having a good season. Skaggs got a no decision thanks to a Jim Johnson blown save back in May after throwing 6 innings with 7 Ks and allowing only 2 runs (solo shots to Dozier and Rosario). Pitch Arsenal: Gibson was good agains the Angels last time around. How good? He only allowed 3 hits over 6 innings and one of those was against Simmons who is sitting this one out. Gibson has been pretty good this year and like Skaggs, is currently sitting at the lowest ERA of his career. He’s been walking A TON though and allows a walk about every other inning. Pitch Arsenal: Verdict: It’s a good pitching matchup. Let’s hope the Angels take advantage of some walks (seriously - Gibson has them in EVERY game), and Skaggs can keep doing Skaggsy things. GAME 3 Nick Tropeano (4.35 ERA) v. Fernando Romero (3.96 ERA) Sunday, June 10th @ 11:10AM Pitcher vs. Batters Summary: Nick Tropeano has 2 wins in his last 3 starts but also a 5.40 ERA over his last 4 starts. He’s pretty much been the epitome of a 5th starter (or 6th in the Angels case). He’s been pretty average most games with two great starts and a few bad ones. Against the Twins he threw 6 innings and gave up 3 runs on 5 hits. I’ll take that kind of performance from him to anchor this series. Pitch Arsenal: Romero is good and has some impressive stuff but he did have a hiccup against the Royals where he allowed 8 runs over 1.2 innings. They were just teeing off on him. Outside of that game he has a 2.10 ERA this season over his other 6 games. Romero held the Angels to just 1 run on 5 hits over 5 innings but they squeaked out a 2-1 victory thanks to a pitching gem by Ohtani. Pitch Arsenal: Verdict: Tropeano v. the young rookie Romero doesn’t exactly give me warm fuzzies. Might be the game we need the bullpen the most. Overall Verdict: The Angels could win this series but the Twins have been hard to predict this year. They really need to pull off at least 2 games before they head to Seattle. Current Standings<doc-sep>A rain delay forced the Angels to idle for four hours Saturday. Turns out it also was pouring inside. “I had like four Red Bulls,” pitcher Tyler Skaggs said. “I was ready to go.” Heavily caffeinated and sufficiently armed, the left-hander produced seven solid-and-then-some innings as the Angels won their sixth game in a row, beating Minnesota 2-1. Advertisement Skaggs arrived at Target Field early Saturday, taking the first of two buses from the team’s hotel like he usually does. He then waited more than seven hours to pitch, passing the time by with sugar and vitamin B, 12 ounces at a time. “I knew it was going to rain,” said Skaggs, who routinely checks the weather forecast. “But I didn’t know it was going to be that long.” When the game finally began, he didn’t appear to be the least bit inconvenienced. Skaggs had a 1-2-3 first inning, overcame a 26-pitch second that included a double and a walk, then had another 1-2-3 inning in the third. In the third, he retired Bobby Wilson, Brian Dozier and Eddie Rosario with a fastball, a changeup and a curve. Then, in the fourth, he struck out Robbie Grossman during an at-bat that featured a 71-mph strike one (curve) and a 93-mph strike three (fastball). “It’s not easy to sit around for four hours and wonder are you going to pitch or not pitch,” manager Mike Scioscia said. “When we got a definitive (start) time, you could see him go into overdrive and just get ready.” After giving up a leadoff double to start the fifth, Skaggs retired the next three hitters on eight pitches, including a foul tip that catcher Jose Briceno secured for strikeout of Dozier. Advertisement The only run the Twins scored came on a double play that helped end a sixth-inning threat. Then came the seventh, when Skaggs supplied what he called the “exclamation point.” On his 100th pitch of the day, he struck out Miguel Sano. On his 108th pitch, he struck out Ehire Adrianza. On his 112th and final pitch, he struck out Ryan LaMarre. “He went to the auxiliary tank,” Scioscia said, “and just finished strong.” Skaggs (5-4, 3.08 ERA) matched rookie Jaime Barria for the team lead in victories, doing so by holding the Twins hitless in five at-bats with runners in scoring position. Advertisement The Angels’ runs came on home runs by Ian Kinsler — who has homered in three straight and hit six in his past 11 games — and Albert Pujols. After Kinsler’s home run in the third, Mike Trout and Justin Upton walked. Pujols thought he drew a walk, too, but umpire Jim Reynolds disagreed. He called him out on a full-count strike three that, upon review, appeared to be outside. Pujols demonstratively reacted but avoided saying anything that would get him ejected. Good thing because Pujols hit his homer in his next at-bat. Advertisement The RBI was the 1,951st of his career, tying Pujols for sixth all-time with Stan Musial, a Hall of Famer he got to know during his time in St. Louis. For a player whose name appears routinely on lists with baseball’s greatest ever, matching Musial brought something extra for Pujols. After the game, he said he would be giving his jersey and his bat and the ball to the Musial family. A day that began with the Angels doing a lot of nothing ended up with them doing plenty.<doc-sep>
Mike Trout on Sunday had a batting average of .000, “Trout” and a string of zeroes rarely appearing in the same sentence. Of course, that was over only a single game, a sample size comically small but also fully representative on a day of lost chances and a lost game, the Angels falling to Minnesota 7-5. “Mike’s never that far off,” manager Mike Scioscia said. “Occasionally, you’re going to have some stretches where hits aren’t falling in.” This stretch included all nine innings against the Twins, Trout going hitless in five at-bats, each of which came with runners on base. Before Sunday, he was batting .317 this season under such circumstances, with a 1.037 on-base-plus-slugging percentage. So Trout stranding eight runners as the team was three for 15 with men in scoring position was the sort of development the Angels aren’t used to seeing. This is especially true during a season in which he’s threatening to break Babe Ruth’s all-time record for WAR, a rough but revered measure of a player’s overall value. “His approach is good,” Scioscia said of Trout, who has two hits in his last 19 at-bats. “His process is good. He’ll be fine.” The Angels won two of three games against Minnesota but scored only 10 runs and batted .212 (21 for 99, 23 strikeouts). Of particular note other than Trout, Luis Valbuena was hitless in 11 at-bats with six strikeouts and Justin Upton was one for nine. Still, the Angels had an opportunity in the ninth inning against closer Fernando Rodney after Albert Pujols’ two-out, two-run single. With the tying run on first base, Zack Cozart popped out. “There’s no doubt we had chances,” Scisocia said. “We kept pressuring them early in the game. We just couldn’t keep building on that.” Before Pujols’ ninth-inning hit, the Angels scattered a trail of empty moments. Here, presented in chronological order, are the results of their other at-bats with two runners on base: Single, strike out, fly out, pop out, pop out, line out, single, sacrifice fly, strike out, ground out, strike out, ground out, pop out, pop out. Lost, too, was the chance given Nick Tropeano, the Angels starter who surrendered two early runs but then watched his teammates come back to take a 3-2 lead after four innings. “When the offense puts up runs, it’s my job to go out there and throw up zeroes,” Tropeano said. “I just didn’t do that today.” Things went to pieces for him when the first five Twins to bat in the fifth inning reached base, three of them eventually scoring. Tropeano (3-4) gave up two walks, a single, a double and a triple before being relieved by Cam Bedrosian, who gave up a run-scoring double. The inning was a stark turn for Tropeano, who began the fifth having retired 10 batters in a row. “I just got to do a better job of executing pitches with runners in scoring position,” he said. “That’s on me. Overall, not a good day.” The Angels head to Seattle for three games against one of baseball’s most surprising stories. The Mariners not only sit atop the American League West but have risen to that perch without Robinson Cano. In fact, Seattle greatly improved in mid-May after Cano was suspended for 80 games because of a failed drug test. The Angels and Mariners last met May 6, a day that ended with the Angels leading the division and 1½ games ahead of third-place Seattle. Since then, the Mariners are 22-10 and the Angels 16-16. But that’s baseball, where fortunes can change quickly, even for someone like Mike Trout. jeff.miller@latimes.com