When Angels hitting coach Brady Anderson sat down in the dugout earlier this week to discuss the team’s current offensive malaise, he did so willingly – happily, even – but with a caveat.
“I wish I had appropriate answers for you,” Anderson said.
The obvious issue is that when a team slumps, it’s really the combination of a half-dozen or more individual slumps, and each of those can have totally different explanations.
“One player having trouble hitting with runners in scoring position, whoever that might be, is not going to be the exact same reason why another guy doesn’t do it,” Anderson said.
Plus, 15 years as a big-league player and seven years in the front office have trained Anderson to look at the big picture, which certainly doesn’t comfort fans suffering through each loss.
“All I see is the work that’s done,” Anderson said. “I’m in that cage all day long with those guys. They come in methodically, like maniacs, working on their hitting.”
Their work is not working, though.
The Angels rank 18th in the majors in runs per game. Lately, it’s been worse. They’ve scored two runs or fewer in 14 of their last 23 games, leading to a 5-18 stretch that has sunk the Angels to the bottom of the standings. They are 16-28.
During those 23 games, they’ve hit .232 with a .659 OPS. They’ve hit .202 with a .583 average with runners in scoring position.
“You can evaluate it,” manager Kurt Suzuki said. “I think it’d be crazy for us not to evaluate it. I think there’s definitely areas we can improve and there’s a lot of areas that we’re really good at.
“A big hit here, a big hit there, maybe a bounce that goes our way here and there, these last couple weeks or whatever could be different. I think it’s just the ebbs and flows of the game. I know they’re working on it. They’re evaluating what we’re doing and how we can improve each and every day. I think if we just stay within our work and we believe that eventually it’ll all come together.”
A 23-game sample can flip quickly. Just last season, the Angels were even worse over a 21-game stretch in late April and early May. They hit .197 with a .574 OPS.
Over the next 17 games, they hit .253 with an .813 OPS and went 12-5. They maintained a .736 OPS over the next 93 games, going 47-46.
They ultimately faded in late August and September as injuries knocked players out of the lineup, and they finished with a .695 OPS that ranked 23rd in the majors.
To determine whether this team has better days ahead, you can start by digging into the underlying numbers.
The expected stats – which measure the quality of the contact, not the result – show that the Angels so far are getting exactly what they’ve deserved.
Their .232 average is slightly above their expected average of .229. Their .386 slugging percentage is slightly below the .391 expected slugging percentage.
One thing that is clearly going wrong is their strikeout rate, again. The Angels’ 26% strikeout rate is the worst in the majors. Last season, their 27% rate was the worst in the majors.
On the positive side, their 10% walk is 13th best, a significant improvement from last year.
The latter is a part of what encouraged general manager Perry Minasian to say recently that the “quality of at-bats” has been good.
“I haven’t seen the three-pitch, swinging at balls in the other batter’s box, empty at-bats,” Minasian said. “I think there’s a lot more quality at-bats where, there might be a strikeout, and you never want to strike out, but it’s a seven-pitch at-bat against a really good starter. You ended up striking out, but it’s a quality at-bat and you pass the baton to the next guy.”
The Angels have seen the second-most pitches-per-plate appearance of any team in the majors. That has helped them knock opposing starters out short of five innings in 41% of their games. The major-league average is 31%. Last year, they only did it 25% of the time.
In the last week, they chased Toronto’s Trey Yesavage and Cleveland’s Slade Cecconi after four innings. For all the pitches they saw and baserunners they had, they didn’t score a run against either pitcher.
Anderson believes that will change once a few of their hitters “with track records” get hot.
All four of the Angels’ everyday players who are younger than 27 currently an OPS that is worse than last year. Zach Neto (.793 to .738), Nolan Schanuel (.742 to .692) and Jo Adell (.778 to .713) have all been better in the past week or so. Logan O’Hoppe (.629 to .579) is about to come off the injured list.
While there is room for improvement from all of them, it’s also possible that the Angels’ two veterans who are exceeding last year’s numbers – Mike Trout and Jorge Soler – come back to earth.
As for Josh Lowe and Yoán Moncada, they are so far below expectations that they will either get better or lose more playing time.
Oswald Peraza and Vaughn Grissom each seem to be on the verge of breakout seasons, but it’s still too soon to be sure.
The sum of those individuals is going to have to be better than it’s been if the Angels are going to reverse their trajectory.
They have the backing of their hitting coach.
“As far as showing up to the park every day, ready to go, ready to work, enthusiastic about the next game, whether they won the night before or lost, whether they’re up 5-0 or down 7-0, they have a consistency that’s exemplary,” Anderson said. “That’s what I see.”
UP NEXT
Dodgers (TBD) at Angels (RHP Jack Kochanowicz, 2-2, 3.97), 6:38 p.m. Friday, ABTV, 830 AM