One Out From Emerson: Another Dan Special

We came out of the road trip a game under .500 and carrying a franchise record we did not want. Thirteen straight games scoring three runs or fewer, the same mark we set back in 2015 and 2016 when this team was actually bad. Doing it while basically healthy for the first time since early April makes it worse. The only real absence is Donovan, and even he's just taking a couple days. Pitching has been the saving grace. George has three straight quality starts, Luis is sitting around a 1.69 over his last handful, and Woo set a scoreless-innings streak north of 31 at home before the road version of Woo showed up again. Randy's back, Dom's back and fighting a nagging hamstring that kept him out Tuesday. The bats keep getting bodies and keep flailing anyway.

Pittsburgh cost us the series, and it stung because we missed Skenes and still couldn't cash. Game one we took 3-2 behind six strong from Kirby, a Cal Raleigh homer, and the storybook one, Cole Young going deep in his hometown with his high school coach in the bleachers. Mooney closed it for save fourteen and finally looks like someone we can trust again. Game two was the 11-1 clunker, three hits and a run in the first and nothing after. Game three was the real gut punch, a 9:30 a.m. getaway where we loaded the bases three times and scored zero, stranding twelve. That is where pinch-hitting a .133 lefty specialist for Canzone or Raleigh becomes exhibit A for why Jerry and Dan are on the list.

Cleveland was more of the same, another 1-2. We won game one on the hometown tour, Colt Emerson going 3-for in Ohio and Dom Canzone launching one of his own, with Castillo dialed in. Saturday we lost 4-3, down 4-0 into the eighth before a Randy three-run shot and some good ninth-inning at-bats against a top closer came up short. Sunday was the worst, because we finally broke the three-run wall in the seventh and thought we had a series win. Then Dan pulled Hancock one out early, burned Bazardo for a single out, and let Josh Simpson lose it to the lefties. JP grounded out on the first pitch in the ninth and that was that. It makes you wonder how many of these calls are even Dan's, or a directive coming down from Jerry.

Then the Angels flipped the mood. We walked in expecting a sweep, a game under .500 and out of the division lead, and instead took the first two. Game one was the Cole Young show, his first two-homer game, one a lefty-lefty laser to dead center, with Dom adding a lefty-lefty tank of his own. Game two we saw in person, an 8-3 win built on twelve singles and a double, Woo dealing at home, Julio with three hits and his average finally creeping up, Colt with three more. Bryce Miller goes tonight against Ureña looking as sharp as he has all year. As for the piggyback, it got called off the second Logan got hot and we have not heard a word since. It is on the shelf, probably dead, and honestly good riddance to being a man short in the pen.

Around the league, the Mets finally cut their manager loose at 34-47, though changing the vibe over there feels hopeless. Misiorowski hit 105.5, which we are rounding to 106, and he had the nerve to say he slipped and left a couple ticks on the table. The Angels fired their GM two weeks before the draft, which barely registers for a franchise that has been in the dumpster for thirteen years. The Yankees are scuffling without Judge while the Rays ripped off seven straight behind Caminero's six-game homer streak. And the White Sox dropped twenty-two on the Royals, almost all of it on homers, on a day the Cubs put up twenty-one and the Rockies fourteen.

Tonight it is the Angels again, then a three-game pennant rematch with a Blue Jays team limping in having lost seven of eight. Stay right, don't let anybody else get right, and ride it to October. Ryan says it probably won't happen. He also said that last week.