Right. So we're 2-2. Which means if you went in braced for disaster you were half right, and if you went in thinking this was finally the year you were also half right, and everyone gets to go home feeling exactly how they arrived. The Angels opened the season on the road in Houston, went up 2-0, then handed back the series in consecutive evenings in a manner so distinctly on-brand that I had a moment of genuine affection for this team, the way you sometimes feel warmly toward a friend who cannot stop making the same mistake.
Let's start with what was actually good, because there was real stuff to point at. José Soriano was everything we needed him to be in Game 1. Six innings, two hits, four walks, seven strikeouts. The Astros went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and stranded nine. Yordan Alvarez hit a ball in the first inning that bounced off a rafter in the closed roof at Daikin Park and landed foul — which is not justice exactly, but it'll do. Soriano faced 24 batters and had the kind of command you want from your Opening Day starter, the kind that makes you believe the arm injuries of the last few years are genuinely behind him. It was 0-0 through six innings of careful, disciplined baseball from both sides, which is its own kind of entertainment if you're into that sort of thing.
Then in the seventh, Mike Trout hit a 96 mph fastball 403 feet onto the train tracks in left-center. Off a reliever named AJ Blubaugh, which is a name that deserves to be said out loud. He also walked three times in the game and stole a base and played center field for the first time since April 2024, and it was his 14th Opening Day start — a franchise record — and his fifth Opening Day home run, also a franchise record. He is 34 years old. He looked like the best player in the building. Peraza drove in a run in the eighth, Schanuel homered in the ninth, Romano closed it. 3-0. First Opening Day road win since 2013.
Game 2 was Josh Lowe's introduction to the city of Houston and he made it count. First pitch he saw from Mike Burrows in the second inning — a fastball — he put it into the Crawford Boxes for a three-run shot that broke a 1-1 tie. Lowe was acquired from Tampa Bay in January, quietly, the kind of move this front office makes when they're hoping no one notices. We noticed. Trout homered again in the fifth, marking the first time in his 16-year career he's gone deep in each of his first two games of a season. Neto added a solo shot off the ninth to make it 6-2. Kikuchi went 4.1 innings and gave up two runs, the bullpen gave up nothing. Zeferjahn picked up the win. It was on Apple TV+ which means the six of you who could actually find it were probably watching Neto's homer alone in your living room at 11pm.
Games 3 and 4 are where we need to be honest with ourselves, because this is a website about being honest and we built it specifically because this franchise has not been honest enough for eleven years running.
In Game 3, the Angels led 6-4 after five innings. Reid Detmers started, gave up four runs, but the offence kept them ahead — Schanuel, Soler and Peraza all went deep, Trout drove in three. The Angels bullpen had been perfect through 7.2 innings to start the season. Then Walbert Ureña came in and gave up six runs in one inning. One inning. Correa singled, O'Hoppe threw the ball away trying to catch him, Walker singled, Diaz hit a two-run single, Meyers doubled off the right field wall. Eight runs in total in that sixth for Houston, the most they'd scored in an inning since July 4. Ureña was charged with six of them. Joey Lucchesi got the other two. Final score: 11-9.
This matters for a specific reason that goes beyond one game. The Angels have finished last or second-to-last in the AL West in four of the past five seasons. The bullpen has been the single most consistent source of collapse across that stretch. This wasn't one bad reliever having one bad night — it was the sixth inning of Game 3 of the season, the Angels were winning, and the whole thing caved in about twelve minutes. O'Hoppe's error didn't help. But the error just opened the door. Ureña walked through it at pace.
Game 4 was Tatsuya Imai's MLB debut, which was the most interesting storyline of the day and had nothing to do with the Angels. Kochanowicz started for us and issued five walks in four innings. Five. Against a lineup that had no idea what he was going to throw, which is both a compliment and an indictment of the same pitch sequence. Neto hit a homer and drove in two, Soler had three RBI, Adell drove in one, but Houston scored nine and that was more. Final: 9-7. Kochanowicz is the fourth or fifth starter on this roster and sometimes he pitches like it.
The series numbers are worth sitting with for a moment. Nine home runs in four games, 25 runs scored — the Angels can hit. Trout, Neto, Schanuel, Soler, Lowe, Peraza, all live at the plate. That part of the plan is working. Schanuel had five RBI over the series, Neto had three, Soler had five. The lineup is not the problem. The lineup has not been the problem for the better part of two years. This is what makes the whole thing so maddening — they go to Houston, score 25 runs in four games, and come home 2-2 because the pitching staff had one catastrophic inning that swallowed an entire game.
The number that sits with me from this series isn't the record. It's the fact that before Ureña's inning, the bullpen had been perfect. Then it wasn't. That's 2026 in miniature, right there in four games. There's enough here to be genuinely encouraged. There's also enough here to be exactly as worried as you were in March. We are eleven years without a playoff appearance. The gap between this team and the good teams in this league still exists. But it is, at least, a smaller gap than it was. That has to count for something. We'll see what it counts for in October.
Johnson starts tonight against the Cubs. The rotation hasn't collapsed yet. Small mercies.