Angels Starter Showed Major Poise to Continue Hot Start to Season

Reid Detmers is overflowing with confidence and will make Los Angeles Angels history with each start if he continues to win without losing.

The 24-year-old left-hander is the first Angels pitcher since Jered Weaver in 2011 to earn a victory in his first three games of the season. Detmers has allowed two earned runs in 17 ⅓ innings and has an ERA of 1.04.

It took a lot of offseason work to get to this point. Detmers credited the work he did on his mechanics over the winter for his fast start, allowing him to self-diagnose when something was going wrong. Friday night's 7-0 win against Boston was the latest test for Detmers and his winter work.

“I was fighting myself a little bit,” Detmers said via Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register, “but I worked between innings and figured it out slowly and by the end of the game I had all my stuff back. You’re going to have days like that. This offseason I figured out some stuff, and if I do have struggles, I can go back to that and get back on track.”

Detmers struck out seven and walked two, throwing 98 pitches with 64 landing for strikes.

“In his pregame bullpen, his stuff wasn’t there as much as it was at the end of the outing,” Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe told Fletcher. “Obviously in the first inning, I thought it got much better, but he really figured it out. And then he was able to settle in and be the guy who was the starts before.”

Detmers gave up three hits and a walk in the first three innings but his defense prevented the Red Sox from scoring with the help of some double plays.

From the fourth inning on, Detmers retired 14 of the last 16 hitters he faced.

“It’s huge because I knew I didn’t have strikeout stuff early on,” Detmers said. “I was doing everything I can to get ground balls or weak pop flies.”

Detmers' next start will most likely be against Tampa Bay on Wednesday as he looks to extend his record to 4-0.