The Angels lost the ballgame 7-2, mostly because Doug Fister is really, really good at baseball. He isn’t an ace, but he has everything it takes to get there, and he’s only lacking in the *consistency department.
*I haven’t looked to see if he’s actually inconsistent statistically, but, regardless, him taking the mound isn’t always looked at as a death sentence to other team, so he isn’t an ace in that sense.
The Halos got on the board first when Fister left a fastball out over the plate and Albert Pujols smacked it over the wall in left field.
Detroit’s offense isn’t particularly good; there isn’t a lot there outside of Prince Fielder, Miguel Cabrera, and Austin Jackson. In the first inning, CJ Wilson recorded the first two outs, then saw Cabrera and Fielder reach before Delmon Young tied the game with a single.
Things didn’t get particularly bad until the 2nd inning, when things got started with a Brennan Boesch ground-rule double. Following Boesch, Gerald Laird worked a walk. Danny Worth then singled, but the ball wasn’t deep enough to score Boesch.
After Austin Jackson struck out for the second time in as many plate appearances, Ryan Raburn reached on a single (that was really a fielder’s choice). Raburn hit a dribbler up the middle, where Erick Aybar fielded the ball and flipped it to second, not in time to get Worth.
Following Raburn, Cabrera hit a ground ball to second base and Howie Kendrick, fielding to his left, would have had to make a brilliant play to get the double play, so he chose to get Cabrera at first.
With two outs and the score now 3-1, Prince Fielder came to the plate and drilled a ball to centerfield, plating two more for the Tigers.
After the second inning, things settled down. The Halos had no rebuttal against Fister, who ended up with 10 strikeouts, just two walks, and a pair of hits allowed over his eight-inning gem.
Detroit tacked on a pair of runs in the fifth, and the game was over then, if not much earlier. The Halos would score Mike Trout after he tripled with one out in the 9th, but that was it and the final score was 7-2.
Hudson Belinsky can be followed on Twitter at @hudsonbelinsky.
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