MondoLinks: Fightin’ Halos Won’t Go Easy

Wake up, people, Mike Scioscia is leaning into the brave new world of pitcher flexibility. Sure, his hand has been forced, but here he is. He used a position player, Francisco Arcia, in the 9th inning Saturday night. That was the first time in his very long career that he fell to that level of desperation. Arcia would throw a scoreless frame. He would then come back and homer in the very next game, yesterday afternoon. Two-way brilliance! Look out Shohei!!.......Scioscia got 8.2 innings out of his bullpen corp yesterday, which was just hours after using them for 5.2 innings to cover for a collapsing Tyler Skaggs. If you don’t have starters to put into your starting rotation, you make it up with your relief corps. It almost worked. Had Jim Johnson not gotten dumped for 4 runs yesterday in the Evil Inning of 4, and Skaggs not wasted everybody’s night on Saturday by pretending to be an effective starter, the Angels would have had a chance to sweep and it would have been done on the shoulders of the extensive bullpen effort. But, alas, that is all wouulda-coulda-shoulda. After winning on Friday 4 - 3, the Angels dropped Saturday night 7-0, and then ran out of time to come back on Sunday, losing ultimately 8-7.

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