We're a little past the midpoint of the 2011 baseball season, and the Los Angeles Angels are tied for first place in the American League West. On the list of sentences I did not expect to be typing this year, that is right up there with, "Josh Tomlin sets a major league record," and, "Derek Jeter agrees to hit ninth instead of lead off because that's where his bat belongs in 2011," but there the Halos are, in first, and even more surprisingly, with a legitimate record.
Can The Angels Win The AL West?
The Angels are tied with the Rangers for first place in the AL West more than halfway through the year, but do they have the players to keep that pace?
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Regular win-loss records for teams can be misleading in either direction. Sometimes a club runs into a stretch of poor luck or good fortune that can alter its final record, but we can see through that by looking at third-order wins. Third-order wins are adjusted for the quality of opponents and also for a team’s underlying statistics in an attempt to weed out luck and tell you just how good a team is. The thing is, with this year’s Angels, luck hasn’t been part of the story, as they have 45 wins in reality, and 45 third-order wins, too.
The team they are tied with, the Rangers, should have 47 victories rather than 45 according to third-order wins, and, if not for a slew of early-season injuries, would likely be further ahead than even that suggests they should be, but regardless of the should, this is where they are -- those extra losses are in the books, just like the 45 wins of their rivals.
Will the Angels be able to keep pace with the Rangers from here on out, for the remaining 76 games on the schedule? Looking at their starting lineup and rotation gives you a very non-definitive “maybe,” as their ability to keep it up depends on whether or not a few of their veterans who have failed to perform to this point can get things together before too many more games pass them by.
They have Jered Weaver and Dan Haren in the rotation, arguably the most effective 1-2 punch any rotation in the game has to offer, and those two are backed up by Ervin Santana, Tyler Chatwood, and Joel Pineiro. Santana has been a very solid mid-rotation hurler, but Pineiro has been no better than average with peripherals (3.7 K/9, 1.6 K/BB) that suggest he has been lucky to do even that, and Chatwood has been even worse, yet somehow has a 3.83 ERA that bests Pineiro's luck.
One of those two will need to step up in the second half so that the Angels have something closer to a full rotation they can depend on. Pineiro has never been much of a strikeout pitcher, but this has been low punch out year even by his standards -- if he could get back to some of his older numbers, such as last season’s 5.4 per nine (and 2.7 K/BB ratio), the Angels would at least have someone who looks like a fourth or fifth starter on their team, rather than the current someone who I’m convinced is making sacrifices to the baseball gods before each start in order to average 6-1/3 innings each time out. Chatwood is a bit more of a wild card, given he had never pitched above Double-A before this year, and wasn’t even very good there. It may be up to Pineiro, barring a deadline trade to add an arm.
The lineup has even more holes in it. Catcher Jeff Mathis has a line of .194/.239/.292 in 161 plate appearances, and Hank Conger, while better, is at just .220/.304/.355 in his 159 trips to the plate. Right fielder Torii Hunter is having his worst season since the beginning of the last decade thanks to a .240/.315/.378 line, and his corner outfield mate Vernon Wells has been even worse at .215/.245/.399. Mark Trumbo has filled in admirably for Kendrys Morales at first base, but his .296 on-base percentage just isn't cutting it considering all of the other problems in the offense.
Wells has a .218 BABIP that surely won’t last the season, but it’s not like he was expected to be an excellent hitter this year, either. His rest of season ZiPS projection has him hitting .249/.297/.418 through year’s end, not too far off from some initial projections for him (Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA had Wells at .257/.311/.417 heading into 2011). Still, if he were able to do that, it would be a boost from where he currently is, and the Angels need every boost they can get. The same goes for Torii Hunter (.264/.332/.435 rest of season projection, and .263/.328/.423 pre-season). Getting one or both of those players back to where they were expected to be would make a difference for the team’s lineup down the stretch, as there are just too many holes in the lineup right now.
Of even more concern than whether or not the expensive veterans on the roster can step up to keep the team in the race the last three months is whether or not the Rangers are going to stick around this level of success, or have themselves a high-quality second half. Playoff odds are not kind to the Angels, who have a 20.3 percent chance at the playoffs (and just 0.2 percent of that wrapped up in the Wild Card) compared to Texas, who is at 70 percent to win the AL West. Those simulations see the gap in talent between the two showing up in the second half, with the Rangers finishing with 85 wins, and the Angels sliding backward to a sub-.500 80 wins.
The Rangers haven't been whole all year, with Nelson Cruz either hurt or not very Cruz like (although he is slugging .547, helping to make up for some of his on-base issues), Josh Hamilton limited to 215 plate appearances due to his humerus fracture in mid-April, and Colby Lewis having a hard time deciding if he wants to be the sometimes dominating Lewis of 2010, or the one who pitched himself out of the majors and off of the Rangers years before that. If Hamilton can stay healthy, Lewis can keep building on his small bits of recent success (36 strikeouts against nine walks in 33 June innings bodes well for his future, though, those seven homers were worrisome), and Cruz can keep on hitting the ball very far very often, the Angels are going to have a hard time keeping up, as those playoff odds simulations suggest.
Of course, Lewis could continue to scuffle, and Hamilton is certainly not known for his health, so there is an opportunity for the Angels here. They need more out of their corner outfield slots, first basemen (the addition of Russell Branyan hasn't been a boon for the offense as was expected), and the back of their rotation if that is going to happen, though, and given the track records of the players involved, while it's a possibility, it's far from a guarantee.
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