The Seattle Mariners just missed out on the postseason last year, winning 86 games while the Los Angeles Angels fell under .500. Head-to-head, the Mariners held the edge, as you would expect, winning 11 of their 19 meetings. They’ll try to keep their head-to-head advantage going in 2017 as these teams meet in Anaheim over the weekend in a best of three series.
This series will be contested from Friday, April 7, 2017 through Sunday, April 9, 2017 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Friday's clash is being shown live on MLB Network.
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Pitching Matchups
The series kicks off on Friday with a battle of the fifth starters with the Mariners’ getting their first regular season look at Yovani Gallardo who takes the bump opposite of the Angels’ Jesse Chavez.
Both Gallardo and Chavez have seen success over their careers, but neither is coming off of their best season.
While Chavez spent last year as a reliever split between Toronto and Los Angeles, Gallardo spent his fair share of time on the disabled list and, when he was healthy, he never was able to get on track in his first and only season with the Orioles.
Gallardo is a former No. 1 starter during an eight year career in Milwaukee. He’s got a very respectable 3.79 career ERA and until last year delivered at least 180 innings in seven straight seasons.
While he’s certainly not as dominant as he once was, with his velocity and stuff on a downward trend the last few years, he’s still only 31-years old and as recently as 2015 was a very effective five-to-six inning starter for the Rangers, pitching to a 3.42 ERA in a very hitter friendly park.
Chavez, meanwhile, found the most success as a starter with the A’s, in a three year span he pitched to a 3.98 ERA.
When the rotation flips back over for both teams on Saturday, it’ll pin Felix Hernandez against Ricky Nolasco.
Hernandez isn’t the Cy Young contender he was in his 20s, but he’s had a lot of success in his career against the Angels, facing them 50 times and going 16-16 with a 3.34 ERA despite some less than stellar teams behind him. He’s now got much better support and is still a career 3.16 ERA pitcher coming off a sub-4 ERA season.
He started Opening Day for the Mariners and had to come out of the game after five innings due to a groin injury. In those five innings, he gave up just two runs against a very strong Houston offense.
Nolasco, on the other hand, is just happy to be out of Minnesota. He signed there before the 2014 and was a huge bust. After the trade to the Angels last year, however, he pitched well with a 3.21 ERA in 11 starts. On opening day, he went 5.2 innings, allowing three runs to the A’s.
Finally, these teams wrap up the series on Sunday with Matt Shoemaker against Hisashi Iwakuma. Iwakuam is getting up there in age and had a bad first start to the year, but has been good in his chances at Angel Stadium. Shoemaker beat the A’s in his season debut and was the team’s best pitcher after a rocky start last year.
Offensive Breakdown
The Mariners have the better—or at least deeper—offense on paper with a strong heart of the order in Robinson Cano, Kyle Seager and Nelson Cruz, but the trio haven’t gotten off to a great start.
After their opening series with the Astros, the Mariners’ heart of the order is 4-for-32 with one RBI and two extra base hits, both doubles. Seager did draw five walks in the series to help the combined OBP a bit, but these three are crucial to the Mariner’s offense finding success.
Overall, only Jean Segura really came through for Seattle in that series. He was just 4-for-15, but he did slam the team’s first home run while driving in a pair of runs.
On the other side, the Angels actually got some production out of players not named Mike Trout. That’s the key for them.
We know that Mike Trout is the best player in baseball and will produce impressive numbers in most series he plays. Sure, he had a better series than anyone else with five hits, including four for extra bases, but C.J. Cron, Andrelton Simmons and Kole Calhoun also had strong series. On top of that Danny Espinosa slammed a home run and drove in five.
Bullpen Comparison
Coming into the season, Cam Bedrosian in the closer’s role was the only given in the Angels’ bullpen and the team is still looking for another answer.
Jose Alvarez, Yusmerio Petit and Andrew Bailey each also delivered a scoreless inning, but J.C. Ramirez, Bud Norris and Blake Parker each have already given up a combined five runs in 6.2 innings.
Flip the script to the Mariners and they’ve already used eight pitchers out of the pen. Evan Scribner and Chase De Jong both pitched poorly in their chances, but the other six have given up one run on eight hits in 10.1 innings, walking just two batters and striking out five.
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