Hunter's Blast Tips Angels Past Chicago: Angels 3, White Sox 2

Mark Buehrle pitched a quality start plus, but Torii Hunter's leadoff homer in the seventh provided the Angels their margin of victory. Considering Scott Kazmir lasted six innings and threw an unbelievable 118 pitches; despite his reputation, the pitch count was in fact high for him, the highest all year; he's on pace for his usual ten or so games annually with over 110 pitches, and this was his sixth game with 118 or more pitches thrown. Darren Oliver, Kevin Jepsen, and Brian Fuentes closed the game out without incident, though I did notice one odd tic about Mike Scioscia's bullpen utilization. Scioscia let Jepsen start the ninth, faced one batter (the right-handed Alex Rios) — and then after the White Sox pinch-hit lefty A.J. Pierzynski for Ramon Castro, Scioscia brought in Brian Fuentes. Jepsen's platoon splits against lefties — an otherworldly .355/.406/.430 — stand in stark contrast to his death-on-righties numbers of .209/.258/.244, so it was...