Posted 3:24 PM by Sean
Here we sit, broken-hearted. Okay, maybe not entirely crushed, but that last loss to the Red Sox on Sunday night - in 14 innings - wasn't helpful. The Angels had what has to be considered the toughest schedule in all of MLB for the first 25 games: the AL West round-robin, then series with the Yankees and Red Sox. Eleven wins and fourteen losses against that competition isn't terrible, but it sure ain't championship caliber - or even playoff-caliber, really. It's somewhat cold comfort that the Angels came excruciatingly close to winning that Sunday game a couple of times, and thus nearly finished 12-13, which would somehow seem a lot better than one game.

No matter. Tonight, the bloodbath hopefully ends, and the Angels can get started doing what they did so well last year - take care of the teams that make up the also-ran portion of the AL. The Angels take on Cleveland, the team that Bud Black could have managed this year. And the first step towards getting back into the playoff is to have Ramon Ortiz mow down the now Thome-less Indians. The Indians will start Ricardo Rodriguez, who was fairly mediocre as a late-August callup for the Tribe last year but has pitched very well indeed in his starts this year. His worst start was his most recent, against Seattle, in which he went seven innings and gave up four runs on five hits.

Last year, the Angels went to Cleveland after their 6-14 start and righted the ship with a 21-3 win in the first game and a sweep of the series.