For one more week, the Angels’ games will continue under a shroud of irrelevance, destined to be forgotten by the morning after they occur, if not before.
The franchise’s future is not at stake within these last games. It will be, far more, on Wednesday afternoon at Angel Stadium, when right-hander Garrett Richards will face hitters for the first time in four months. He’ll then start and pitch two innings next week in an instructional league game in Arizona. He tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in May and soon received a stem-cell injection as an alternative to Tommy John surgery that could enable him to pitch next season.