The Angels Joined The Playoff Race By Sweeping The Dodgers

Forbes

a day ago

The Los Angeles Angels completed a season sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers last night, flipping the script on how their head-to-head meetings were supposed to play out—especially since the starting pitcher for the Dodgers was former Angel Shohei Ohtani.
Their comeback win was capped off by a two-run single by Logan O'Hoppe in the bottom of the eighth to give them a 6-5 victory, and it puts them back on the outskirts of the playoff picture.
The Angels are still three games below sea level with a 59-62 record, and they've been hovering around .500 all season. However, they're just five games behind the New York Yankees for the final Wild Card spot, though they would also need to overtake the Cleveland Guardians, Texas Rangers, and Kansas City Royals to get there.
If they succeed in making that climb, it would represent their first playoff appearance since 2014, when Mike Trout was only 22 and Ohtani was a teenager, pitching and slugging for the Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan.
The Angels' greatest asset is power. They're third in MLB with 173 home runs, trailing only the Yankees and Dodgers. They have seven players with double-digit home run totals, and they're one Zach Neto blast away from having four players with 20 or more bombs.
However, their .306 on-base percentage is only 23rd in MLB, and their 96 OPS+ indicates their offense has been 4% worse than the league average. Seven of their 12 players with at least 100 plate appearances have on-base percentages below .300.
Neto has been their top player, hitting .269/.327/.477 with 19 homers, 21 stolen bases, a team-best 4.2 WAR (Baseball-Reference version) and excellent defense at shortstop. The best hitter overall has unsurprisingly been Trout, who leads the club with a 126 OPS+, but that represents the worst mark since his 40-game debut in 2011, and it's well below his career average of 170. (For context, he's just above Ty Cobb's 168 and below Mickey Mantle's 172 on the all-time list.) Still, playing mostly designated hitter has kept him in the lineup more often, and he just surpassed 400 plate appearances in a season for the second time since 2019.
The real obstacle to a playoff run is that their pitching hasn't been good enough. Their 4.63 ERA is 26th in MLB, and their 4.68 FIP ranks 28th. They lead MLB with 460 walks allowed and they've given up the third-most home runs with 164.
The same five pitchers have started 118 of their 121 games, so they've enjoyed exceptional durability, but the results haven't been sufficient. Yusei Kikuchi was their lone All-Star representative, and he has a 3.37 ERA, but it isn't backed up by his 1.42 WHIP. The same can be said of José Soriano, who sports a 3.84 ERA, but a 1.37 WHIP. Tyler Anderson leads the American League with 26 home runs allowed, and Kyle Hendricks has only 82 strikeouts in 120 innings. Jack Kochanowicz was recently demoted after putting up a 6.19 ERA with a league-high 74 earned runs.
In spite of their pitching problems and low on-base percentage, the Angels have remained in the playoff picture. They're a winning streak away from surprising some teams, and the Dodgers can attest that they might have the power to do it.