ANAHEIM – Baseball is hard.
Or it can be.
The way the Angels have been playing it.
Baseball is like life, too, we know; you’ve got to go through it to get through it.
Whether the Angels get through it this season, well, we’ll see. The long game is afoot.
Whether they can, well, that is going to depend on the club’s “veteranism,” as Manager Ron Washington dubbed the thing that every team needs but that’s been in short supply so far for the mostly hapless Halos.
After starting the season 8-4, the Angels went on a slide that became a slump that turned into an absolute free fall. They won only five of their next 21 games and two of their previous 12 before showing some inclination that they could pull out of the nosedive, with Tuesday’s 8-3 victory against the Toronto Blue Jays.
The result was astonishing for the Angels’ abrupt offensive onslaught – their six runs in the eighth inning was more than they’d scored in a game since April 10 – and also for the maturity the club displayed, the discipline and demeanor, keeping cool on a chilly spring night at the Big A.
The victory might prove to be a blip, but it didn’t feel like it in the moment. It felt like a hint. Or, a hint of a hint? A taste, a tease. A peek around the corner at what could be possible if the guys on this Angels roster stopped pressing. At the plate, on the mound, overthinking or thinking about it wrong, everyone putting more pressure on each another in the self-defeating cycle.
That’s where the veteranism is supposed to come into play.
Why the Angels need their guys who’ve gone and gotten through it to come through.
Why they needed Taylor Ward, a 31-year-old with seven-plus years of major league experience, to be a teammate-teacher by example. To remind everyone that, more often than not, the work works.
To be a professional hitter who tackles a dismaying 0-for-27 slump by showing up early and take an extra 35 or 40 pitches from a live minor-league arm, replica at-bats and a “skull session” afterward, as Washington coined that, to analyze the batting session.
And, importantly, to show results – so that Washington might, in fact, get “the whole team out here” doing the same.
Gratification came instantly Tuesday for Ward. In the first inning, when he launched a two-run laser 419 feet over the centerfield wall, his longest home run of the season tying the game 2-2. He finished the night with two hits and a walk. “Hopefully,” Washington said, “it’s more to come.”
The Angels need more of that from Ward and the other adults in the locker room, because as impressive as Logan O’Hoppe, 25, and Zach Neto, 24, have been, hitting .294 and .290, respectively, entering play Wednesday – respectfully, the kids aren’t supposed to carry their elders.
The Angels really could use Luis Rengifo – 28, with six-plus years of major league experience and a current batting average of .214 before Wednesday’s game – to work out his issues at the plate. And for 33-year-old Mike Trout to get healthy and get on track; the Angels’ biggest star was hitting .179 in 121 at-bats before a bone bruise in his left knee sat him down for at least 10 days.
They’d love more of the same from Yoán Moncada, the Cuban infielder who will turn 30 later this month and who played his first game Tuesday since going on the injured list with a thumb injury, just before the Angels offense stalled.
Washington was eager to welcome back his “presence,” which is to say, his patient example, the fact that nearly 20% of all his plate appearances result in walks – though on Tuesday night, experience told him he had to go with a different plan: “I was not going to take any pitches, I was going to swing, attack; that’s how you get your timing back.”
Moncada saw only seven pitches in his return to work, including the only one he got in the eighth, when he smashed a four-seam fastball 407 feet off reliever Jeff Hoffman to drive in three runs and build a 7-3 buffer that felt like a small miracle.
The Angels knew they need to arm themselves with some extra savvy in the bullpen too, which is why on Tuesday they called up right-handers Hector Neris and Connor Brogdon to a group of relievers that has, for the past few weeks, seemed to fail every time they were set up for it.
Neris, 35, comes packing 12 seasons of major league experience, including a 4.10 ERA in 59⅓ innings last season for the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros. Brogdon, 30, brings five years of big league experience, and boasted a 3.36 ERA in 101⅔ innings with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2021 and 2022.
“We’ve been using our kids and, you know, I don’t say we’ve been destroying ’em, but we certainly been hurting their hearts and their brains,” said Washington, the Angels’ 73-year-old skipper, taking stock of the residual damage that blowing nine of 15 save opportunities might have wrought.
“Because they’ve been coming up here, and some of them just haven’t been successful. And when you got a kid that has the ability to do something, and then it comes to the big leagues, and he don’t get it done, it destroys him. …
“When you’re young, inexperienced, and you come up here and things don’t happen the way you want it to happen, it can beat you down. You got to be mentally strong, and that’s what Neris and Brogdon brings, because they have been through the war. Now, I’m not saying they’re gonna come up here and be perfect, but the things that they may experience when they touch that rubber, they have experienced quite a few things, a little different than what our young kids have been through.”
Experience, the stuff that can’t be taught, that guys have to learn for themselves.
That intangible ingredient that is supposed to help navigate a way through – and that will have to, if the Angels are going to get through this dry spell and turn the season into something more than a campaign that will make the kids stronger only because it didn’t kill them.