Key Takeaways From the White Sox Sweep of the Angels

In baseball, as in life, it is important to look at what happened and try to learn from it. For an early season series, this one seemed pretty critical as it gave the Angels an opportunities to either bury themselves or climb fairly close to .500. The team brought plenty of shovels and made sure to put them to work.

Let's take a look at the key takeaways from the series.

The Angels bullpen is atrocious.

Heading into today's game, the Angels bullpen had pitched 21.1 innings over the last 6 games. In that time they surrendered 25 earned runs on 30 hits and 14 walks. They tried to shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic by cutting Jordan Romano and replacing him with Jose Fermin.

As of now, Sam Bachman is the only reliever in the bullpen who can be considered reliable. The rest are getting hit and hit hard, but only after issuing walks.

It is hard to pin today's loss on the bullpen. Tasked with covering most of the game and with an offense that only put up 2 runs, the unit did as well as can be expected.

Zach Neto needs a day off.

Credit to Zach Neto for being a gamer but leading the team in plate appearances while playing shortstop is a recipe to getting worn down. Neto has posted every game for the Angels and at times is starting to look slow at the plate. He also made a critical error in Monday's game that opened the floodgates for the White Sox.

He K'd 3 times on Friday night, 4 on Saturday, and another 3 today. His on base percentage has slipped nearly 15 points and his long term health needs to be considered.

Thankfully the team has an off day tomorrow as we can bet Neto will be leading off and playing shortstop on Friday at home.

Jack Kochanowicz continues to look like a solid starter.

Showing up to Tempe, Kochanowicz was on the outside looking in. He just kept pitching solid baseball then made the Opening Day roster after a couple of injuries. On Monday he went 6 strong innings with 5 K's and threw strikes 62% of the time.

Jack Kochanowicz earned his spot this Spring and is showing he belongs.

Vaughn Grissom and Oswald Cabrera need to play more often.

These are two young, talented players who never received enough playing time to be fully evaluated. As Trent Rush says, give them 500 at bats and let's see what we have.

Grissom had a late home run to give the Angels the lead today. He also went 2 for 4 on Monday night. In 12 games he is slashing an impressive .353/.429/.471 while showing solid defensive versatility.

Oswald Cabrera keeps hitting the ball hard as well. He had hits both Monday and today and is carrying a .272/.344/.469 line with 4 home runs in 28 games.

There really is no reason to continue to play Yoan Moncada. Let the young kids see if they can be part of a future winning core.

Perry Minasian needs to own the failure of the bullpen.

I took a deep dive on why the Angels bullpen is struggling so badly and it led to one place: the general manager's office. Perry Minasian has directed 5 drafts. He picked 21 pitchers in the 2021 draft and has drafted more pitchers than hitters overall.

With over 60 pitchers drafted, many of whom profiled as relievers when drafted, Minasian has failed to produce enough talent to stock a bullpen. 60 guys and he has Sam Bachman and Chase Silseth to show for it.

Walbert Urena was signed under Perry's watch as an international player. As was Jose Fermin. So he has two on the international front as well.

Essentially in half a decade, Perry has spent millions of dollars and drafting and signing nearly 100 pitchers and has a 4% success rate. Add in the $33 million handed to Robert Stephenson and the millions spent on a plethora of other relievers over the years and it is abundantly clear Minasian is not good at building a bullpen.

Add us as a preferred source on Google