The Angels Vs Giants series on July 24 brings together two clubs that have struggled to find any real consistency, with neither side offering much reason for confidence heading into the matchup. The Giants arrive on a five-game losing streak, while the Angels have gone 5-11 in July and were 17-34 on the road before the series.
That is the key backdrop here: this is not a meeting between teams building momentum, but between two organizations trying to stop the slide. Since the start of the 2016 season, the Angels have had only two winning seasons and have continued to sit well short of the standard needed to be considered a stable contender.
Why this series feels like a familiar problem
The numbers tell the story clearly. Since the start of the 2016 season, the Angels' position player group has been worth 139.5 fWAR and their pitching group 107.1 fWAR. The Giants have been better across the same span, with 164.5 fWAR from position players and 143.2 fWAR from pitching, but even that has not translated into the kind of consistent success fans expect.
The Giants have had limited success since 2016, and the Angels have been even more difficult to back with confidence. The result is a series that feels less like a marquee matchup and more like an opportunity for one side to avoid deepening a bad spell.
Angels under pressure on and off the field
There has also been off-field noise around the Angels. In December, Justin “Boomer” Prinstein was hired by the club, but from June 1-3 he scouted the Rockies ahead of the Angels’ home series against Colorado, and during that game at Coors Field he was spotted filming coaches on his phone.
After Major League Baseball alerted the Angels to the incident, the club let Prinstein go. It was another awkward moment for a franchise that has spent too long dealing with scrutiny of one kind or another, even before the latest results on the field were added into the mix.
For the Angels, the bigger issue remains the same one that has followed them for years: finding a way to turn talent into results. For the Giants, the task is slightly different, but just as pressing, as they look to halt their own losing streak and avoid making a weak stretch even worse.
On paper, this may not be the most glamorous series of the summer. In reality, though, it is still an important one for both clubs, because games like this tend to reveal just how far away a team is from changing its season.
