Angels’ playoff hopes pinned on slumping offense and thin pitching

As of Monday morning, the Los Angeles Angels are in great shape. Though they trail the Oakland A's for first place in the AL West, they have a four-game lead in the loss column on the second wild-card team, a six-game lead on the top wild-card wannabe (the Seattle Mariners), one of the best offenses in the American League, and a 98-percent chance of making the playoffs. Nonetheless, their comeback from what might have been the most hopeless season of the Mike Scioscia era in 2013 has to be considered to be hanging in the balance. You see, sometimes you can do everything right, or at least as well as you can under the circumstances, and it still might not be good enough.

The Angels have been playing at a 95- to 100-win pace all year. That's the traditional measure of a excellent-to-great team, one that should coast to the postseason. Even though the Angels are in the same division as the Oakland Athletics, who have been the best team in baseball for the bulk of the season, that has neither changed anything about their chances of playing in October nor reflects on their own strengths. Yet, given changing circumstances means that how they've played to this point has become irrelevant. On Sunday, it was revealed that Tyler Skaggs, their big acquisition in this winter's Mark Trumbo deal (known here in Chicago as the "Thank You, Kevin Towers!" trade) will become this year's 1,693rd pitcher to undergo Tommy John surgery, the latest bad news for the Angels rotation, which has suffered from bad luck and poor performances since the non-waiver trading deadline expired on July 31st. In some ways, the front office had pegged its postseason expectations on a rotation that required more than a little hope to see going deep into the postseason. Now their need for wish fulfillment has grown a little stronger as the postseason itself could conceivably be in danger.

Having added Jason Grilli and Huston Street to the bullpen, general manager Jerry Dipoto wasn't, at least outwardly, in the market to add help to the rotation because as he told Mike Digiovanna of the Los Angeles Times, the "key ingredient" to shoring up the rotation would be the return of C.J. Wilson, who landed on the disabled list on July 10th due to a right-ankle sprain. Even after the Athletics added Jon Lester to their rotation, a move that almost seems redundant given their starting pitching depth, Dipoto said, "We are comfortable with the team we have," even though the addition of Lester and Jeff Samardzija to the Athletics' rotation promised to make the Angels' ascent to the postseason exponentially more difficult.

Wilson returned from the disabled list before his command did; he has accumulated a cringeworthy 11.03 earned run average in 23.2 innings pitched since his last quality start on June 24th. Wilson has also lost his first two games since he returned from the disabled list, including a pounding by the Rays in which he gave up six earned runs in 1.1 innings pitched on August 2nd. On July 31 came the bitter irony befitting a team that proclaims it is "comfortable:" Skaggs' injury came in a game where he had pitched four no-hit innings, a flash of dominance which leads the imagination to fill in -- almost certainly erroneously -- all sorts of Kershawian blanks through the end of the season. With Skaggs going under the knife and Wilson lost, the Angels are left with roughly 1.5 good starting pitchers. They are ahead for now, but the remainder of the season is poised to become a 45-game battle to make it to the wild-card play-in game.

The Angels have found an ace this season in Garrett Richards, a career 4.42 ERA pitcher in 230 major league innings heading into the season. Richards, 26, has increased his velocity, sharpened his breaking pitches, and allowed the fewest home runs (per nine innings) than any other pitcher in the American League. They also have nominal ace Jered Weaver, the three-time Cy Young candidate who has been merely league-average this year; he was his sharpest in May and forgettable since (4.29 ERA in 14 starts), but he can eat innings if nothing else -- he's the .5 of the 1.5 starters.

With Skaggs out and Wilson struggling, the Angels will have to lean more heavily on the back of their rotation, which presently consists of Matt Shoemaker, a minor league journeyman with exquisite control masquerading as a major-league starter and Hector Santiago, a seemingly valuable lefty who has lost both his screwball and his Will To Win since leaving the White Sox.

Hector Santiago (Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports)

We can only partially fault Dipoto and his gang for miscalculating -- with perfect knowledge and a crystal ball it would have been obvious that the Angels needed a safety net for the rotation, but even as recently as mid-July, the Angels' rotation was much improved over last year's and that in itself seemed like a victory. As Dayn Perry of CBS Sports wrote last month, the Angels rotation had improved all of the key pitching metrics (earned runs, wins above replacement, and strikeout percentage) except for walk percentage, and the outlook for the rotation was stability and productivity since they were less reliant on replacement-level pitchers this season than last year. Perry wrote, "while the 2013 Angels were reduced to giving 33 starts -- or more than 20 percent of the schedule -- to the likes of Joe Blanton and Tommy Hanson, the 2014 model has gotten more palatable back-end contributions." It was also seductively easy to assume Wilson's return would add all the depth the Angels might need.

Given the general weakness of the Angels' farm system and the high price of pitching at the deadline, it's not as if Dipoto had much choice other than optimism, and so it's difficult to fault him with any fairness. The Angels are and were likely stuck with the arms they already possess. The post-deadline pitching market holds even less starting pitching than the pre-deadline market did (which wasn't much) and since the Angels currently have a firm hold on the wild card, it's going to be virtually impossible for them to add a valuable pitcher off of waivers, particularly since the Blue Jays, Yankees, and Orioles will get first dibs. Even if an opportunity to add help does present itself, the Angels are handcuffed in their ability to make a trade since they gave up much of their shallow minor league depth for Street. It's all academic now given that Cole Hamels has been withdrawn from waivers, but think about it: if the teams with the deeper farm systems couldn't match up with Ruben Amaro, the Angels never had a chance.

Compounding matters, the offense is currently slumping. The Angels have hit .234/.296/.349 over their last 25 games. The schedule is now the Angels' enemy as well, as little of the season remaining as there is. The Angels have two off-days in the next six days, and according to Matthew DeFranks of MLB.com, Scioscia will look at reshuffling the rotation to make either Richards or Weaver available to pitch against Oakland at the end of the week instead of wasting them in an interleague game against the Phillies. Scioscia also told DeFranks that despite Wilson's struggles, he has no intention of skipping the latter's next scheduled start and, "We have a long way to go and we need all five of these guys continuing to throw the ball well." They will face Oakland in 10 more games before September ends, and have seven more games against the Mariners, who are just 1.5 games back of the second wild card (tied with the Yankees and Blue Jays). The Royals are on another streak, winning seven straight games and 10 of their last 11 games, keeping up the pressure from behind.