A First Five Play in Los Angeles

Well, we finally got some of that bad luck out of the way and ran into some good luck. It doesn't always go the way you expected, but I was happy to see that we pulled this game out to go 3-0 yesterday. The Angels looked like they'd never swung a bat until about the eighth inning when Shoei Othani broke the scoring open for them. The Angels went on to win in extra innings.

Today, the Angels face the Twins in the last game of the series. The Twins need to be conscious about how many winnable games they lose - yesterday was a prime example of that. Chris Archer takes the ball for them today. I think he's actually been better than expected this year. He isn't the ace of the old days, but he has a serviceable starter that can keep them in games. One spot he has excelled in this season is night starts. He has a 2.09 ERA in 9 starts. The unfortunate part for the Twins is that this is a day start, where he has a 5.90 ERA. The Angels hitters don't have much experience against him, but did get six hits in 20 at-bats against him.

On the other side, the Angels send Tucker Davidson to see if they can keep any momentum going from last night's victory. This year may be out of reach for them to do anything, but this guy needs to pitch better if he wants to have any spot in the rotation next year. So far, he's looked very bad. On the season, though it has just been four starts, he has a 7.91 ERA. In his one start for the Angels, since coming from the Braves, he allowed six earned runs in four innings. Now, one note for Davidson is he has alternated bad and good outings. He has five appearances on the season, in his first he allowed five earned runs, the second outing, he allowed none. Then the third appearance, he allowed another five earned, and so on. By that pattern, today should be a good game for him. But, I don't buy into that pattern.

The Twins are the play here, we will take their reasonable moneyline at -130 through five.