Kuzul

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are hanging around the playoff picture. They do not have a spot in the dance yet with 15 games to go. But ask current Angels’ first baseman Albert Pujols about how a team can make a late run.

With 15 games left last year, Pujols’ Cardinals were 4 1/2 games behind the Atlanta Braves for the wild card. The 2012 Angels are only three back right now.

Those Cardinals went 11-4 the rest of the way and would eventually be crowned World Series Champions.

Can a similar fate happen to the Angels?

The final 15 games begin tonight in Anaheim against the Texas Rangers.

The Angels will start their Cy Young contender, Jered Weaver tonight against the Rangers’ Ryan Dempster. Both solid pitchers, but the advantage tonight should go to the Angels at home.

Former Ranger C.J. Wilson matches up against his former teammate Derek Holland in game two. The finale on Thursday has the Angels’ Zack Greinke against Rangers’ starter Yu Darvish.

Each game is a good matchup, but the Angels could certainly win two of three. And a series victory for the Halos could have repercussions throughout the American League.

First of all, a series win would keep the Angels in the wild card hunt as they chase Oakland and currently Baltimore for one of the two spots.

Secondly it would put additional pressure on the Rangers. Their division lead, which was 6 1/2 games on August 12, is down to three. With a hot Oakland team breathing down their neck and seven games head to head against the A’s, the division title is by no means locked up.

The Rangers would certainly rather win the division than play a one game Wild Card playoff.

And finally, the Angels creeping back into the American League Wild Card hunt would put added pressure on the American League East race.

Tampa Bay is fading out of the picture, but the Orioles and Yankees are currently separated by half a game. If the Angels could pass the runner up of the Eastern Division, it would make the Baltimore and New York struggle more intense without a safety net for second place.

So for fans who are not from Texas or Orange County, the Angels and Rangers series might seem irrelevant to you.

But pay attention. The effects of the results will be felt clear across the country. And for anyone rooting for a wild finish in the American League, root for the Angels tonight.

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The New York Yankees have lost the last four games that CC Sabathia has started. Of all the stats that can be broken down during the Yankees’ slide, none illustrates why they have dropped 10 games in the standings more than that.

The Yankees need to be able to hand the ball to Sabathia and get a win. Instead, Sabathia has not shut down the opposition and is not the stable arm that manager Joe Girardi can count on to give the bullpen the night off.

He has not been terrible in his starts. This is not a Kevin Brown-like meltdown. But according to Erik Boland of Newsday, his velocity is down. And games he used to breeze through are now long, drawn-out affairs where the bullpen needs to be up in the sixth inning.

His September 14th start against Tampa Bay was a typical recent start. He started off fine, keeping the Rays scoreless through four innings. But he could not put away Chris Gimenez in the fifth inning. Suddenly he lost his control and his advantage over the hitters. Before long, he coughed up the lead and took the loss.

According to Steven Miller of MLB.com, Sabathia admitted “things like that, when I’m going good, usually don’t happen.”

Andrew Marchand of ESPN New York wrote that Sabathia is not excusing his subpar performances on his recent stints on the disabled list, including one in August.

However, there is a difference between making an excuse and finding an explanation for a problem. If Sabathia is indeed hurt, then it would be smart for the Yankees to have him examined again or maybe skip a start.

There is not a lot of time to fix this problem for the Yankees. But if they do not find out if there is something physically wrong with their ace, they might fall behind not only Baltimore, but Oakland, Anaheim and Tampa Bay and miss the playoffs altogether.

Missing one Sabathia start and determining what the problem is will not kill the Yankees. It is not as if they are winning his starts now.

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This one hurt, Pittsburgh Pirate fans.

In fact the excruciating 14 inning, 4-3 loss to the Cincinnati Reds could very well be a devastating blow to the team and their fading hopes for a playoff spot.

There certainly was no lack of effort on both team’s part. Both the Reds and Pirates wiggled out of impossible late game jams that looked as though they would put the game away.

The Pirates loaded the bases in the 11th and the 14th, the latter with nobody out. They failed to score.

The Reds bailed out Pirates reliever Tony Watson when Todd Frazier swung at ball three and four in the ninth inning with a runner on.

Jose Tabata made a game saving catch with two outs in the bottom of the 11th.

And with two outs in the bottom of the 14th, reliever Rick van den Hurk got Ryan Ludwick to ground out but shortstop Chase d’Arnaud could not get it out of his glove and the game was over.

A victory would have meant so much for the Pirates. It would have pulled them to within a game and a half of the Wild Card and help wipe out the memory of the embarrassing sweep at home by the lowly Cubs.

Instead, their losing streak is at four games. They are only four games above .500. They have dropped 21 of their last 30 and spiraling.

And yet a victory tonight and a Cardinal loss puts them right back in to the mix.

Last week, I wrote a Bleacher Report article about why it is better to lose 12-2 than a close extra inning game.

There is no better example of that than last night. The Pirates need to turn their ship around or those bases loaded opportunities will haunt them all winter.

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The Pittsburgh Pirates are trying to climb back into playoff position and time is running out. As of this article there are only 25 games left in their schedule and they remain a game and a half out of the wild- card spot.

So with this little time remaining, they can not afford to lose many games. But if they must lose a game, last night’s 12-2 debacle in PNC against the Cubs was the perfect way to lose.

There is no looking back at last night’s game and thinking “Oh man, it was so close.”

It is impossible to break down the game and point to one or two places where it could have been won.

It was a complete and utter breakdown on all counts. The pitching was bad, the offense was bad and the defense, with seven errors, was atrocious.

And that is the perfect loss. No one part of the team was let down. Everyone was almost equally terrible.

The bats were shut down by Travis Wood, who let only one hit in six innings. A. J. Burnett only lasted five innings. The defense, starting with first baseman Brock Holt, opened up the flood gates. And left fielder Starling Marte was so bad that it was not obvious that he had played baseball before last night’s game.

According to Yahoo Sports, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle called the game their “worst game of the season.”

Who could argue with him?

With time running out, losses can wear down a team, especially ones that got away.

If a team loses 1-0, they can lament that they blew a solid pitching performance and grind their teeth thinking of runners on base.

If a team loses 9-8, it can be agonizing knowing that even mediocre pitching could have secured a win.

If a team blows a lead late, it can have a residual effect into the next day. If a team loses a game on an error or a blown call, it can be devastating.

When a team loses 12-2 to a pitcher who had not won in months and had a defensive day worthy of The Bad News Bears, there is no frustration. No element of the game was wasted. It was a total failure.

As Hurdle said in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “there’s nobody in there that isn’t embarrassed to some degree.” Well, then that would be a total team effort.

Dust yourselves off, Pirates. The Cardinals lost as well and the wild card is still only a game and a half away.

Besides, you are bound to play better today. How could it be worse?

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Last night, Washington Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg was pulled after three innings in a 9-7 loss to the Miami Marlins. It was his second subpar start in as many games. And today, according to NBC 4 in Washington, the team has decided the circus is over.

There would be no more monitoring his pitches or worrying about his arm. The Washington Nationals, the team with the best record in baseball, will not pitch Stephen Strasburg for the rest of the season and postseason.

Nbcwashington.com quotes Nationals manager Davey Johnson saying Strasburg “wasn’t focused as much on the game as he was on the impending shut down.”

This goes back to something I wrote in a Bleacher Report article last month. The Strasburg innings limit should never have been made public. And the handling of Strasburg could have been adjusted when the Nationals made their surprising run at the National League East.

He could have been shut down in the middle of the season, or used once a week, or had his innings reduced at the beginning of the year.

Instead, the Nationals will go into the postseason weaker than otherwise possible. Washington will see its first postseason since 1933 a man short.

Then again, maybe by shutting him down now after a few bad starts, the Nationals could spin the situation by not pitching well.

Maybe that was part of the plan. Wait for his next bad start and then shut him down and be able to say to fans “Hey! He was wearing down.”

Either way, the Nationals still have a solid pitching staff as they go into the playoffs. But they are no longer the prohibitive favorite.

Circumstances that align for a legitimate run at a pennant do not come every year. They landed on the Nationals lap this year and they can still win it all in 2012. However, they made it just a little bit harder for themselves by taking Strasburg out of the equation.

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Please forgive the pun…but Lorenzo Cain was able against the Chicago White Sox Friday night.

Perhaps this author saw too many back pages of the New York Post and internalized the paper’s distinct play on words. But when I saw that the Kansas City Royals not only beat the Chicago White Sox again, 7-5, and that Lorenzo Cain homered twice, including a game-winning shot in the ninth, using the pun was inevitable.

So now the Kansas City Royals have defeated the first-place Chicago White Sox in each of their last six meetings. If the White Sox just went 3-3 over those six games against the lowly Royals, they would have a four-game lead over the Detroit Tigers with 25 games to play.

Their magic number would be 21.

But instead, the White Sox can barely get any space between them and the second-place Tigers. As both teams lost tonight, Chicago is still clinging to a one-game advantage over Detroit.

But it was not just Lorenzo Cain who produced for K.C.

Reliever Kelvin Herrera entered a second-and-third, one-out situation with the game tied in the eighth and managed to wiggle out of it to eventually earn the win. Salvador Perez got a pair of hits, including a homer that briefly put Kansas City on top. Alcides Escobar made a dazzling play at shortstop. Greg Holland closed the game out for the save.

But it was Lorenzo Cain’s night to shine and yet another game where the Royals can torment their brothers in the AL Central.

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The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were reeling. A 7-15 stretch in late July and early August put the ambitious Halos from being a pennant contender to a mere two games over .500.

The Angels were in danger of becoming the American League answer to the Marlins. They made big attention grabbing moves in the offseason, none bigger than signing Albert Pujols from the Cardinals, but now were crashing and burning towards a losing season.

At 62-60, it would take only a modest losing streak to have them sink below .500.

And then came the baseball equivalent of a trip to the spa: The Angels played the Red Sox. And thus their season was saved.

The Angels won the August 21 game at Fenway, 5-3. They then beat the Red Sox 7-3 in game two and won the wild, bizarre “Does anyone want to win this?” 10-inning game-three finale, 14-13.

While the Angels lost two of three in Detroit afterwards, they arrived in Anaheim where the Red Sox were waiting for them.

Three days later, the Red Sox left town without a win. The Angels had swept the Red Sox twice in nine days.

Essentially, they needed to find a team more dysfunctional than they were to kick start their winning ways.

Since arriving in Boston on August 21, the Angels are 10-3. They remembered how to win again, ending the Athletics‘ nine-game winning streak yesterday.

As of this writing, they are a mere 3.5 games out of a wild-card spot with 27 games to play. It may be quite a hole dug by their 7-15 July and August stretch (as well as their other 7-15 run at the start of the season.) But the team is super talented with Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Jered Weaver highlighting the team.

Plus, they play the Athletics six more times. The best way the well-paid, talented Angels could overtake the scrappy upstart A’s is head to head.

Count out the Angels at your own peril. For them it is a shame, though, that they aren’t going to play Boston again. They got their groove back against the Red Sox.

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Baseball is so unfair. How can a small-revenue team like the Boston Red Sox hope to contend against a big-market team like the Oakland Athletics?

Yesterday was an example of how momentum in baseball is not always simply seeing who the next day’s pitcher is. Sometimes, it is a direct reflection of the team.

The Oakland Athletics are a team that, against all odds, have arrived at September in the lead for a playoff position. They are doing it with deep pitching and power from multiple sources. Seven Oakland hitters are in double digits for home runs.

And it seemed like they hit all of them last night against the Red Sox last night.

Boston’s West Coast road trip has seen the Red Sox do their best Houston Astros impersonation. They were swept by the Angels and looked like they were totally unprepared to play in Oakland.

In their last 17 games, Red Sox pitchers have surrendered five or more runs 12 times. That’s a problem.

Then came last night. Last night’s 20-2 A’s victory looked and felt like a major league team playing a minor league squad. It was an embarrassing massacre during which the Athletics not only looked like the big bullies, but they did so with former Boston Red Sox players.

In fact, if Red Sox fans wanted to feel anything positive about last night, they could feel good about old friends who are doing well elsewhere.

One-time Red Sox Brandon Moss went 4-5 with a homer and four runs batted in. Former Boston catcher George Kottaras homered twice and drove in five runs.

Josh Reddick, the Red Sox’s right fielder in 2011, doubled and hit a grand slam. 2007 world champion Coco Crisp did not get a hit, but walked and scored.

The Red Sox used to be the ones that stole players from Oakland. They won the 2004 World Series with big contributions from Johnny Damon and Keith Foulke.

Now, it is the Red Sox who are playing out the string with a lineup that resembles a split squad spring training game.

The A’s? The American League West-leading Texas Rangers are only four games ahead of them. They are ahead in the wild-card race and are taking their momentum to October.

They have won 13 of their last 15 games including seven straight. Will their winning continue? They are playing the Red Sox again today.

If yesterday is any indication, the Red Sox are not even in the same league as the A’s.

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The Houston Astros managed to trade away one of their few remaining actual major leaguers while remaining a punching bag for contending teams.

According to Sports Illustrated, Ben Francisco, who came over in the massive nine player deal with Toronto on July 20th, has been shipped off to the Tampa Bay Rays for the always popular Player-To-Be Named-Later. Hopefully his 31 days as an Astro were memorable. The Rays will be his fourth major league team since 2011.

While Francisco returned to the major leagues, the Astros continued their farewell tour of the National League with a 9-3 drubbing at the hands of the Reds.

At one point it looked like the Astros were going to put up a fight. The Reds took the lead 2-0 on a second-inning Zack Cozart two-run homer. But Houston fought back. They hit back-to-back homers by Fernando Martinez and Matt Dominguez, who came over from the Marlins in the Carlos Lee deal. The score was tied.

Did the mini-home run barrage mean the Astros were going to come back?

Of course it didn’t. Jay Bruce homered the very next inning, Mike Leake got the win and there was no need to pitch Aroldis Chapman.

The Reds got their 81st win, clinching at least a .500 record for the year. They have moved 9.5 games ahead of the Cardinals and are looking to do what everyone else is doing: padding their win total in Houston.

The Astros’ record under interim skipper Tony DeFrancesco is 1-10. If the team loses one of the next two games against Cincinnati (the odds are in the Reds’ favor) the Astros will have lost seven straight series.

If DeFrancesco wants to remove the “interim” label from his title, he should make his win total plural.

The loss, the 92nd for the team, makes them officially the ninth worst team in the history of the franchise.

For the sake of the remaining Houston baseball fans and the other teams in the playoff chase, hopefully the Astros will pick it up and win a little more at the very least to play spoiler.

It starts later today. Homer Bailey against the Astros Lucas Harrell, who has pitched very well but with bad luck.

Of their remaining 30 games, 17 are against either the Reds, Pirates and Cardinals. It would be nice for baseball to see them put up a little bit of resistance.

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Stephen Strasburg, whose arm is being treated by the Washington Nationals as if it is a Fabrege Egg, did not have his best stuff tonight.

He let up a pair of runs in the first and three in the third. With his innings at a premium, why would the Nationals send him out for the fourth inning against the Miami Marlins?

For some unknown reason, manager Davey Johnson had him pitch the fourth where he let up a run. Then he batted in the fifth and came out to pitch in the bottom of the inning where he let up a double to Giancarlo Stanton and another run.

He finished his game with five innings pitched, nine hits, five earned runs and three strikeouts. If they are limiting his innings, there was no reason to have him pitch more than three. There are two innings they could have banked.

The coddling of Stephen Strasburg has bordered on insanity this season. On Bleacher Report, I suggested that they find ways in the bullpen to stretch his appearances into the playoffs without exceeding their innings limits.

Instead, they seem hell bent to have him use up his innings before the postseason, and the perfect combination that would make the Nationals the favorites in October would be compromised. The strange logic the Nationals seem to have is “All of the elements are coming together for 2012, but let’s concentrate on 2013 and 2014.”

Seasons where the competition falls and a team comes together can be so fleeting in baseball. Ask the Angels and the Marlins and the White Sox, whose recent World Series titles were clinched when a series of positive events all clicked at once.

Now imagine one of those teams deciding to not use one of their best pitchers in the postseason. How many of those events would have unclicked?

If the Nationals are hell bent on limiting Strasburg’s innings, then that is their decision. But is it wise to burn those innings when they do not have to?

Shouldn’t they try to save a few for September, or better yet October?

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