Joe Smith is now the Angels closer

Mike Scioscia has gone back and forth between Joe Smith and Ernesto Frieri as closer this year -- and had a fun little detour experimenting with Cam Bedrosian once last week -- but now he’s back on Smith:

#Angels Scioscia: “We’re going to keep Joe in the back end for right now until Ernie gets his feet on the ground and his game comes back.”

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) June 25, 2014

Makes sense as Smith has been better than Frieri. Still, it does sound like Scioscia is determined to give Frieri every opportunity -- maybe too many opportunities -- to get back to the closer’s role.

A lot of the times I’m sorta “meh” on who’s closing, but the Angels look like a playoff team at the moment -- they lead the Wild Card race in the AL and are only four games back of the best team in baseball for the division lead -- so ironing out the bullpen is going to be pretty important for them. It’s nice that they have a couple games cushion at the moment with which to do it.