ANAHEIM — The Angels have a starting pitching problem, or, have had a starting pitching problem.
To assign blame to the front office ignores that this has now potentially happened under three general managers, the names of Joe Blanton, Tim Lincecum, Jesse Chavez, Matt Harvey, Trevor Cahill and Julio Teheran — each moves simply aimed at adding even competent innings around a Mike Trout-fueled offense — instantly coming doused in kerosene. Instead of at least being passable with some of their moves in free agency or falling under the category of underperformance or injury, they have been complete and utter disasters.
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José Quintana, signed to a one-year deal this winter worth $8 million as a safe, capable innings-eater, has looked like the latest such misfire after five starts. Quintana is a one-time All-Star who thrived off command and location, but this season has struggled to find either. He’s tried pitching from one end of the rubber, and then the other. He’s tried quickening his tempo, only to suddenly screech to a halt the moment a runner reaches base. Even the most forgiving of underlying numbers in what has been a perplexing pitching line wouldn’t make a 10.59 ERA easy to ignore. (After all, it would be the 22nd-worst season ERA ever for a starter who makes five or more starts.)
The 32-year-old left-hander retired the first six batters he faced in Monday’s 7-3 loss against the Rays, his longest such stretch all season. He missed bats, worked quickly and was effective. Then it all fell apart, again, raising questions, again, about how the “safe” offseason signing has appeared anything but and soiling what would be a horrid night that ended with Anthony Rendon crumpled in a heap on the ground after a foul ball (X-rays on his leg were negative; the Angels said he is “day to day”) and a 41-year-old Albert Pujols playing third base.
This outing provided at least some level of promise — Quintana emphasized attacking the strike zone and found success, inducing the second-most swings-and-misses (22) as he had in any start of his big-league career. He avoided the walks. While half of the batted balls Quintana allowed were classified as hard-hit, coming off the bat at 95 mph or harder, it was not jarring enough damage to raise too much concern. Which makes the results all the more perplexing.
“How can I be better?” Quintana said after noting his swing-and-miss stuff. “That’s the question I make to myself. … I kept battling, but I couldn’t get the results and it was really frustrating.
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“This sucks. But one day I’m going to be good, and it’s going to be really soon.”
A change doesn’t appear imminent, at least not yet. Angels manager Joe Maddon came away as encouraged as one could be with his $8 million starter posting a double-digit ERA, noting the overall quality of the veteran left-hander’s stuff even as the results haven’t delivered.
“Bad luck is the only luck this guy’s got,” Maddon said.
“I mean, the numbers weren’t good. … But then again, he walks one, strikes out nine in 3 2/3 innings. Like, how does that happen? I don’t know what to say, man. I know it’s probably difficult to defend and people are not going to understand, but from where I was standing, he threw the ball well, and a little bit unlucky right now. It’s probably a confidence issue as much as anything else. He has to feel confidence from me and us, as well as from himself.”
Maddon’s urge for patience and confidence is understandable, if not for the track record this organization has had of late with similar deals. Signing arms to fill much-needed innings doesn’t create the worst pitching staff in baseball over the past half-decade. Having those innings-filler signings turn into unrosterable arms almost instantaneously does.
It’s not just that the Angels have largely lacked a frontline starter good enough to pull the rotation into mediocrity, though their best such candidate in years, Dylan Bundy, is entering free agency this winter without an extension in place. They haven’t had a starter qualify for the ERA title with at least 3.0 fWAR since Garrett Richards in 2014, which conveniently enough is the last time the Angels made the postseason.
Take even a marginally improved staff, one where a still-in-progress pipeline of young homegrown arms aren’t overextended and veteran, league-average starters are able to stay even reasonably healthy, and this is a lineup good enough to power the Angels to contention in an AL West rife with parity. Instead, the last decade has seen the organization sign just one starter to a multi-year deal (Blanton) yet spend a combined $60.25 million on pitchers who now have combined for a 6.59 ERA. That’s catastrophic for a rebuilding club, let alone one that has stated a desire to contend.
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So the Angels simply have to see better, and soon, from Quintana, though the alternatives aren’t all too different from years past. Patrick Sandoval, presumably the next man up on the starter depth chart, pitched effectively and in his season debut flashed as good a change-up as he’s had since he was a rookie, but he only lasted one turn through the opposing order. Jaime Barria got knocked around in mop-up duty in his only big-league action. The last time the Angels saw José Suarez in the big leagues, he looked far from the promising young left-hander who was a fringe top-100 guy. Félix Peña is a multi-inning reliever now, and fellow depth options such as Jacob Faria and Dillon Peters are unsettling as “break glass in case of emergency options” in early May.
It’s an all-too-familiar and endemic position for the Angels, one that has already cost one regime their jobs and has led to a 13-14 start for this new one. The issues aren’t isolated to Quintana either. Monday left the Angels with the second-worst rotation ERA in baseball (5.76) despite having the top strikeout rate (31 percent) of any rotation in the game, in part due to a “disappointing” defense that entered the day tied for the most errors (25) and third-lowest Defensive Runs Saved (-9) in the sport.
That has been enough to essentially waste what, through Monday’s action, has been the best lineup in baseball by wRC+ (115). The polar extremes of elite and downright awful have resulted in one excruciatingly mediocre end product.
(Photo: Kirby Lee / USA Today)
