Angels in Spring Training

I saw two Angel games on my trip to Arizona. The first was an ugly loss which I wrote about in the comments of a previous post. The second was last Tuesday against the Padres in Peoria. I tried writing about that from my iPhone but the comment got lost in cyberspace, so I waited until I got home.

John Lackey pitched 5 strong innings, looking like the horse that he is, and has been for his whole Angel career outside of last April. I hope they work out an extension soon. The Angel bats jumped all over the Padre pitching but Brian Fuentes came in and coughed up the lead in the 6th inning before the Angel bats got going again, winning 12-7 (from memory, it was 4 days ago and I'm old). Brandon Wood looks very good, making a lot of solid contact. It remains to be seen how much playing time the Angels can offer him. In 38 at bats, he has 3 walks and 4 strikeouts to go with a .711 SLG. Compare this to his 2008 spring stats, where he struck out 22 times with no walks. I think the kid is making some progress.

One cool thing is that a very nice gentleman seated next to us found an obviously game-used baseball somewhere, and presented it to my 11 month old daughter as a present. She gets her first souvenir baseball before her daddy does, though at least I did have my hands, briefly, on a Nick Markakis homer 2 years ago.

We were considering another game at Tempe on Friday on the return trip from the Grand Canyon area, but decided not to push it. You can't just drive 4 hours straight with a baby in the car.