I Hate The Angels; And You Can, Too

Last April, we sent out a poll on twitter that asked our followers which division rival was their least favorite. The responses essentially came in even: 25% of the respondents chose the Rangers, 25% chose Houston, 25% chose the Athletics, and the remaining quarter said the Angels.

While this parity was intriguing, for me it was infuriating. The reason for my anger was quite simple: why didn’t more people choose the Angels?

I am going to be quite blunt here: I have always hated the Angels. For my entire career as a Mariner fan, the Los Angeles team (from Anaheim?) has by far and away been the MLB squad that annoys me most and I consider to be Seattle’s most bitter rivals. That twitter poll angered me because more people didn’t feel the same way.

I am now here to offer some persuasion.

Many might be climbing onto the “I hate LA” bandwagon after the theft they pulled off in December, swooping in at the last second and grabbing Shohei Ohtani when everyone, their mother, and probably even Rob Manfried, thought he was coming to the Ners. I need not elaborate more on how Ohtani would have been a perfect fit in Seattle (see Patrick’s article above). Simply put, he could’ve been Ichiro, part II.

So while I let the Ohtani bitterness continue to stew, allow me to offer a few other reasons as to why I hate the Angels and you can, too.

I’ll get two trivial reasons out of the way before diving into the real stuff. First: their manager. I don’t really have a problem with Mike Scioscia, I’m just so tired of seeing Mike Scioscia in the opposing dugout.

Catch this: Mike Scioscia, hired by LA in 1999, is the second-longest tenured manager active in the major 5 professional sports. Only Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs (hired in 1996) outduels Scioscia.

This isn’t a valid reason for you to hate the Angels, it’s more just confirming that old adage of when you are heavily exposed to something, you grow to hate it…and man, Mike Scioscia has been there forever.

The second trivial reason for being Anti-Angel is the organization’s constant indecision on where exactly they are located. Forever, they were the California Angels – but that was too general. Then they were the Anaheim Angels – but that was too specific (and potentially too unmarketable). So then they became the Los Angeles Angels – but that was technically not correct, so they threw “of Anaheim” at the end to make it accurate. Since I still don’t really know which it is, I now just refer to the organization as the “California Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, LA,” or some variation.

Okay, I got that out of the way. Now, here are the two real reasons as to why the Angels are the Mariners’ biggest rivals.

1: They’ve historically shit on us

It’s easy to hate a team that always seems to beat you. However, when that team is traditionally better than you are, it’s somewhat more manageable to swallow. For instance, the always-amazing Yankees or Red Sox are probably going to beat the always-dismal Mariners more often than not, making any Seattle victory against them feel like a triumph. It’s rare for me to have ever said “we should beat Boston/New York today.”

But when a team is essentially equal to you and they still find ways to constantly wreck your happiness, it hurts. Man, it hurts. Unfortunately, the Los Angeles Angels of California Anaheim-LA are this team.

Here are some stats to chew on: of all the teams that Seattle plays regularly (those that the Ners have faced over 400 times historically), our lowest win percentage comes against the following teams:

1. Boston Red Sox: 177-238 (.427 W%)

2. New York Yankees: 180-234 (.453 W%)

3. Cleveland Indians: 177-223 (.433 W%)

4. Los Angeles Angels: 283-346 (.450 W%)

Going by what I said in the above paragraphs, the first two on this list make sense. Boston and New York are historically awesome, and it’s no wonder that we haven’t fared well against them. Cleveland is an interesting third – they’re great right now, but they have been somewhat shitty in the past few decades, yet somehow the Ners play them poorly. But, they are also the team on this list that has played the fewest games against Seattle, at 400 exactly.

Los Angeles, however, has played 629 games against the Ners. Six hundred and twenty-nine baseball games! That’s two hundred more than the others on that list…and the Angels have defeated us 63 times more than we have beaten them.

Let’s see…we now play the Angels 19 times every year (excluding playoffs). If we were to sweep them completely each year – which is essentially impossible to do (the best we’ve ever fared was 2001, when we went 15-4 against them…and the rest of the league), it would take us three and a half seasons to climb back to .500 against the Orange County Halos.

2: They’ve recently shit on us

A lot of the poor performance above can be chalked up to the fact that the Ners played CA/AA/LAA a lot in the 1980s, when Seattle was still a relatively new franchise and the Angels were pretty darn good. But these trends have unfortunately continued in recent years. Since the “good years” of Seattle baseball (call it 1995-2003, during which we won an average of 89.1 games per season), the Mariners have finished above .500 against Los Angeles only twice: we were 12-7 against them in 2014, and 11-8 in 2016.

Two times! In fourteen years! That’s a rate of .143 in winning seasons versus Los Angeles. Holy hell, that’s bad.

Now the obvious response here is: “well, the Mariners have been garbage against pretty much every team since 2003.” Fair…but we’ve been even more garbage against the Angels than others during that timespan: of all teams in the old AL West, we have fared the worst against the Angels From Somewhere South of Los Angeles. (This excludes Houston, who joined only 5 years ago and thus offer a very small sample size – although we’ve fared poorly against them, too).

Perhaps the most recent memory of the Angels owning us came just this past season. Remember that one day in August when the Ners pulled into the 2nd Wild Card place? The Mariners held sole possession of a playoff spot, Edgar Weekend was coming up next, and Seattle was flying high.

And then the Angels broke our hearts into tiny pieces. That first game was when it all came crashing down: after Paxton left with an injury, the Ners fought back from 3-0 with a monumental Cruz dinger in the 8th, and the city was revived…this 2017 team seemed to suddenly have the good ol’ Sodo Mojo, and the M’s were about to pull off an incredible comeback to maintain that Wild Card spot.

Mike Trout then brought everything crashing down to a 16-year long reality. That double he ripped off Diaz in the top of the 9th was when the 2017 season ended. The Angels continued on to sweep us, effectively knocking us out of the playoffs, ruining Edgar Weekend, and solidifying Los Angeles as everything that I hate. I wonder how they’ll find a way to ruin our upcoming season.

#Opinion #StatisticalAnalysis