Lost in all the excitement about the Mariners succeeding by playing Angels baseball is the fact that the Angels still play Angels baseball, too. And they play it better.
Since the 27th of May, the M's have gone 30-18. They've played at the pace of a 101-win team. And over that span they have lost 2.5 games of ground to the Angels, who two days in a row have pulled off dramatic late-inning comebacks to snatch annoying-ass victory from the jaws of proper defeat. It's enough to make you want to scream, and the only real consolation is that at least we're overachieving too. But somehow I don't think that feels like enough. Watching the evil-doers rally off of Joe Nathan thanks to uncharacteristic wildness, a bloop single, and a superball grounder up the middle conjured emotions harkening back to Lollablueza. At that point, the tenth was just a formality. Why even bother playing it?
There's still a lot of baseball to be played, but games like tonight's do us a great deal of damage, and while I don't quite understand how we're closer to the Wild Card than the division, that could very well end up being something to keep an eye on, because from the looks of things the Angels may never lose again.