ANAHEIM, Calif. _ The Los Angeles Angels arrived in Anaheim a week ago scuffling.
They had played six games and faced two division rivals on the road to start the season and come home for the Angel Stadium opener with one win. They had wasted great pitching performances by falling into an offensive slump so deep they owned a sickly team on-base-plus-slugging percentage of .481 and an unsightly batting average of .178. They even lost the home opener, throttled 11-4 by a Texas Rangers team that is in the early stages of a roster rebuild.
Everything has changed over the last six days here. The Angels are hitting again, the pitchers are holding steady and the wins are piling up. The Angels secured a series sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers with a 4-2 victory Wednesday night and won their sixth game in a row.
Unlike in previous games during this modest streak, the Angels didn't claw across runs in multiple innings. They got by, instead, assembling a string of six productive plate appearances in the third inning.
Catcher Kevan Smith, who was ejected by plate umpire Phil Cuzzi in the top of the eighth for continuing an argument about the strike zone, was hit by Brewers starter Brandon Woodruff (1-1) to lead off the third. David Fletcher drew a six-pitch walk. Both moved up a base when Kole Calhoun stroked a single up the middle, loading the bags with no outs.
That's when Andrelton Simmons strode to the plate. After taking Woodruff's first pitch, a 96-mph fastball that tailed inside for a ball, he turned on another heater that hung over the plate. He shot it into right field for a run-scoring single and Angel Stadium erupted. Justin Bour followed with a bloop hit to center field that scored two runs. The Angels' fourth and final run of the game scored on Albert Pujols' double-play ground ball.
The Angels didn't need any further production to send the Brewers packing for a three-game series against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.
Angels starter Felix Pena was not sharp in his third start of the season. He threw 32 balls among his 72 pitches. He bounced pitches in the dirt. He plunked two hitters with an errant pitch, saw hard contact on baseballs put in play, and overall struggled to locate his pitches.
If not for select members of the Angels' defense, Pena might not have escaped his four-inning outing with only one unearned run charged to his ledger. Outfielder Brian Goodwin started in center field and pulled a Mike Trout-like feat: He tracked a hard-hit line drive off the bat of Yasmani Grandal all the way to the wall in center field, jumped at the warning track and hauled in the baseball before it hit over the yellow line that distinguishes a home run from a ball in play. As Goodwin came down to his feet, the final out of the second inning in his glove, Pena lifted both his fists up in celebration.
In the fourth inning, the left-handed-hitting Mike Moustakas pulled a hard-hit baseball to right field that caromed off the corner wall. Kole Calhoun was in perfect position to play the ricochet and was able to hold Moustakas to a single. Moustakas never scored, but he was able to advance to third base on a hard-hit line-out to deep right field by Eric Thames.
Pena ended the inning with a bases-loaded swinging strikeout of Orlando Arcia. The 29-year-old slapped his glove, did a double fist-pump and roared what appeared to be a Spanish curse word on his way off the mound.
That was the last the Angels saw from Pena, who was replaced by Jaime Barria in the fifth inning.
The Angels will head to Chicago, where they will face the Cubs in unfavorable weather conditions over the weekend, to start a seven-game trip Friday.
Even without the guarantee of Trout, who sustained a minor groin strain Tuesday, in the starting lineup for Friday's series opener at Wrigley Field, the team's outlook doesn't seem so bleak anymore.
