The Los Angeles Angels continued their East Coast road trip with a 5-2 win over the New York Yankees on Tuesday, led by a strong effort from the bullpen that combined to throw 5.2 scoreless innings.
After José Suarez gave up two runs and walked six batters in just 3.2 innings of work, Andrew Wantz was the first reliever summoned by manager Phil Nevin. The right-hander promptly tossed 1.2 shutout innings and set the tone for the rest of the game.
Wantz was followed by Jimmy Herget, who retired all six batters faced and collected two strikeouts. Jaime Barria and José Quijada then helped close out the victory with one scoreless inning each.
For Herget, it was easily his best outing of the season. He threw more fastballs than usual and believes it was key to his success, via Jeff Fletcher of the Southern California News Group:
After what he did on Tuesday, Herget suggested that he needs to keep hitters honest a little more with fastballs.
“I’ll pick my spots, especially to certain hitters, guys like Judge, really good hitters who have great approaches,” Herget said. “I need to think more the way they think and go from there.”
Herget hopes to build on the appearance and said it gave him a lot of confidence:
“Last night was a good outing for me to build on, give me a lot of confidence,” Herget said. “Obviously I finished a lot of pitches yesterday and I was really pretty fired up after that outing.”
Herget noted he threw his breaking pitches with more conviction and thinks that also contributed to his success:
Herget said the bigger issue he’s faced this season has been not having enough conviction in the breaking pitches he did throw.
“It’s just more of finishing the pitch,” Herget said. “I was kind of like guiding balls in there. Just a little bit of tweaks here and there can change a pitch drastically. So I think it was more pitching with conviction versus before it was like ‘let’s throw a strike.’”
Following the outing, Herget is now 0-2 with a 4.70 ERA, 5.80 FIP and 1.04 WHIP in 7.2 innings pitched across seven games this season.
Perry Minasian: ‘A lot of confidence’ in Angels bullpen
The Angels bullpen has been a bright spot this season, and general manager Perry Minasian recently said the organization has a lot of confidence in the group.
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