The Angels have stumbled into one of the few bright spots they can point to this season, and it’s starting on the mound. A rotation that looked shaky for much of the year is suddenly stringing together quality work, and Yusei Kikuchi is right in the middle of it.
Against the Pittsburgh Pirates last night, Kikuchi turned in six shutout innings in Los Angeles’ 6-1 win. It was another clean step forward for a pitcher whose season has been anything but straightforward.
His year got complicated early. Kikuchi ramped up in advance of pitching for Japan in the WBC, then injured his shoulder at the start of the season and landed on the IL.
The recovery path was murky, too. Kikuchi maintained he didn’t need surgery, a second opinion supported that view, and he opted for a longer stay on the IL.
Even then, the rough outings in his rehab starts made the whole thing look shaky.
Now he’s back, and the results are starting to show it. After a rough first start against the Texas Rangers, Kikuchi has allowed just two runs over his last two outings. That’s a far cry from the mostly mediocre version of him that anchored a questionable Angels staff last season.
“It wasn’t a 50-50 [proposition], because I was able to throw for three, four months,” Kikuchi said as he described his extended hiatus in a piece from John Perrotto of MLB.com. “It was the first time in my 17-year professional career without throwing for so long. So, with the injury being in such a complex location of my shoulder, it was a coin flip if I could come back this year.”
There’s also a layer of what might have been here. Kikuchi likely would have been dealt in the Angels’ deadline cleanup, but his rebound changes the picture in a meaningful way. The club’s future on the field and in the front office remains unsettled, with manager Kurt Suzuki unlikely to return and interim GM John Mozeliak’s status beyond the end of the year still unclear.
Suzuki was impressed with what he saw from Kikuchi.
“Yusei was awesome,” Suzuki said. “He attacked the zone, he got to two strikes a lot, and the velo was there; it was even ticking up a bit. Everything was positive.”
For a team that hasn’t had many of those this season, the starting pitching has become a legitimate source of encouragement. The Angels have some promising young arms in the pipeline, and more could be coming as the organization continues reshaping its farm system.
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