Rain halts Rangers, Angels again, just not in time to stop Odor
This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia was not pleased Saturday night. The source of his displeasure was that his team and the Texas Rangers played a game.
Speaking of surprise, that’s what the players received when they learned that the game, delayed by torrents of rain, would be played.
They knew, along with many others, that the Angels are scheduled for a return trip on Labor Day and that the teams have a mutual off day Sept. 7. They also knew that first pitch for Sunday’s 2 p.m. series finale would come awfully fast if the game wasn’t postponed.
“They came in and said the game’s starting at 9:30,” Rangers All-Star Shin-Soo Choo said. “It was like, ‘What?’”
Things went off better Sunday, at least in terms of getting in the game. Oh, it rained hard enough to delay the game twice before the Rangers prevailed 4-2.
The delay time Saturday was a mere 1 hours, 35 minutes longer.
The timing of the second delay Sunday played into the Rangers’ hands.
Rougned Odor swatted a three-run homer as rain pounded down in the seventh inning, and it was the shot the Rangers needed en route to a 4-2 victory.
The game would be halted for 56 minutes after one more batter, but afterward the Rangers didn’t think the rain was hard enough during the winning Odor at-bat to warrant a stoppage.
“We played through very similar conditions last night for seven innings,” said manager Jeff Banister, whose thoughts were echoed by Scioscia. “It was very similar to what was going on at that time.”
Before the game, some were still wondering why Saturday’s game was played at all. The answers varied, depending on who was asked, but the input from the baseball side didn’t seem to have much weight.
“I’m just a worker here,” shortstop Elvis Andrus said.
The following were all given as reasons for playing the game: A large crowd was on hand; Dennis Martinez, in town for a ceremony honoring Bartolo Colon, had a 10 a.m. flight Sunday; the only other option was to play a doubleheader on Labor Day; and MLB insisted the game be played.
“The field was ready,” Banister said.
He did so in response to a smart-alecky comment that a postponement Saturday would have helped solve the Rangers’ rotation woes for the next series with left-hander Mike Minor and Colon dealing with back stiffness. Colon is likely for Monday.
It took Banister a good 30 seconds to just come up with that.
Scioscia had more to say Saturday after the Angels’ 11-7 victory, which ended at 12:59 a.m. Sunday after a delay of 2 hours, 26 minutes, and during the game itself as rain continued to fall after the 9:31 p.m. first pitch.
Scioscia said that player safety was one of his concerns.
“It was steady … it didn’t get clear until maybe the seventh,” Scioscia told reporters. “The thing that I felt was dangerous was the fact of the water in the outfield. It looked like it drained but it was still very wet out there. That’s something I think hopefully that we can make better decisions on.”
The only decision that Scioscia might regret Sunday is using reliever Noe Ramirez in the seventh with a 2-1 lead. After Isiah Kiner-Falefa popped out to start the inning, Drew Robinson and Choo singled to put runners at first and third as the rain intensified.
Odor was next, and his 15th homer of the season traveled 418 feet into the lower home-run porch just beyond the Rangers’ bullpen. He said that the rain didn’t affect him during the at-bat and wasn’t worried about the umpires stopping play before he batted.
“I never thought that,” said Odor, who drove in the game’s first run with an RBI double in the first. “I was really locked in, so I wasn’t paying attention to the rain.”
The Rangers and Angels were paying more attention to it Saturday night.