We saw it last night. The first game of the year the Oakland A's have won where they should've lost. The bounces weren't going their way, and their approach at the plate played into the hands of the Angels' starting pitcher, Hector Santiago. When you have great starting pitching, you have a chance to win any game, and with the exception of two bad pitches to Albert Pujols, that's what you got from Jesse Chavez.
Because of Jesse's great start, the A's had a shot to win it in the 9th only down 2-1. Josh Donaldson's great at bat that produced a single against Angels closer Ernesto Frieri started it off for the A's, and then came John Jaso pinch-hitting for Derek Norris. I was actually texting someone while John Jaso was up to bat and I said, "He's done it before against the Angels, why not do it again?" I was referring to Jaso's home run off Kevin Jepsen last season in the Angels' home opener which ended up being the start to a 5 run A's inning that shoehorned the labeling of the Angels bullpen as the "#Blowpen." A trend which clearly hasn't changed since then.
This time, the situation was a little different, it was the 9th inning (Jaso's HR off Jepsen came in the 7th) and unfortunately for the A's, we never got to see Kevin Jepsen who has an ERA over 10.00 against the A's and Jaso was instead up against their closer. Frieri was quite shaky last year, giving up plenty of walk-off home runs, but the situation still was a little grave.
Talk about deja vu for Angels fans, John Jaso sent the home fans home with a big blast. A no doubter off the bat that provoked large cheers from a rather impressive cell of A's fans at The Big A. Angels fans have been tortured by the talents of John Jaso over the past couple of years, his time with the Mariners provided some ground work and his time with the A's has just cemented this fact: "John Jaso is an Angels Killer."
Pundits and fans will mention this every now and then, every fan can probably think of one guy who has just killed their team in the past on multiple occasions. Proponents of sabermetrics doubt the validity of a player doing better against certain teams over their careers for a variety of reasons, but the fan side of me believes that this is a real thing.
For the sake of information, here's John Jaso's slash line against the Angels since 2011: .315/.435/.517 in 89 at bats. As said by Susan Slusser, Jaso's a .430 hitter at Angels Stadium through his career with 6 HRs and two of those being pinch hit home runs. That is pure dominance.
Terms like "(insert team name) Killer" make sports fun, it makes our rivals' players easier to hate and really creates deeper nerves during one game. There are a few A's killers that come to mind: Kenny Rogers, Placido Polanco, John Lackey, and Ervin Santana. Rogers, Santana, and Lackey got to pitch a lot of games against the A's since they played for the Rangers and Angels for much of their careers and that's why they come to mind. Polanco on the other hand flat out dominated the A's in 2006.
In 2006, Polanco had a slash line of .516/.545/.548 in 31 at bats against the A's. The A's then would meet Polanco's Tigers in the ALCS that year where he ravaged the A's again in their 4 game sweep with a slash line of .529/.579/.588. Dominance like that isn't something you see all the time.
Now of course, there's a flip side to an "(insert team name) Killer" but I haven't really thought of a name for it, nor have I given much thought to it. Off the top of my head I think of how the A's always hammer Rangers' ace Yu Darvish but other than that I can only think of a few small examples like Kevin Jepsen or Matt Thornton.
Please give me some more examples in the comments!
