ANAHEIM, Calif. – There was a small blip earlier this week, but the Angels ignored it.
They lost two in a row to the Dodgers. They fell back to six games below .500. But they didn’t worry about it.
Now the Angels are back on a roll again, beating the Dodgers 3-2 Thursday night at Angel Stadium and winning for the 10th time in 12 games. The victory gave them a split of the four-game series, improved their record to 25-29 and kept them 8½ games out of first place in the American League West.
Not that they’re paying attention to the first-place Texas Rangers.
“I can’t even tell you the last time I thought about a deficit,” second baseman Howie Kendrick said. “I can’t tell you how many games Texas or any other team has won or lost. The biggest thing for us is just to put up W’s and go from there.”
It’s a practical approach. The season is one-third over, and there are still four months remaining. Paying too much attention to the race can be counterproductive.
Better to focus on each game as it comes. Thursday’s win was largely the work of left-hander Justin Vargas, who started the season 0-3 but hasn’t lost since and became the first Angels pitcher to go 5-0 in May.
One night after Jered Weaver came off the disabled list and threw six strong innings, Vargas worked seven and yielded five hits and two runs to the Dodgers.
The Angels didn’t exactly produce an offensive show against Dodgers starter Ted Lilly, but they did just enough, getting single runs in the second, fourth and sixth innings.
Had they not squandered a 6-1 lead to the Dodgers in Monday’s series opener, the Angels would be 11-1 over the past 13 days. But they’ve been playing recently with a resolve they didn’t show in April or the first 17 days of May.
“There’s a confidence,” manager Mike Scioscia said. “I wouldn’t call it an attitude. What we needed in April was wins, but I don’t think our attitude has changed.
“When you have success and you start to see the things you need in a club, meaning our starting pitching getting to a certain point, the evolution of our bullpen, clutch hitting starting to emerge, that gives you a lot of confidence. These guys aren’t intimidated.”
Vargas struggled in the first two innings and got out of a bases-loaded jam in the second, but then he retired 15 of the next 18 batters he faced. The only hit that cost him was a home run by Ramon Hernandez in the seventh.
As for the contrast between his 0-3 April and 5-0 May, Vargas said, “I don’t really have an answer for that other than getting more outs. There wasn’t anything that I tried to change or tried to do differently. I was just trying to be more consistent.”
And the Angels are trying to have more fun. No more worrying about their horrid 9-17 start or the comparisons to last season’s stumble.
They’re playing and winning and refusing to look at the standings. It’s working.
“We’ve been playing good baseball and having a lot of fun, too,” Kendrick said. “We’ve been playing more relaxed, and guys are enjoying it. We haven’t really thought much about anything. We’ve just been going out and playing. Even in the tight games, tight situations, we’ve been pulling through and having fun and coming up with some big hits here and there.”
Sometimes that’s all it takes.
