ANAHEIM — The Wheel of Misery landed on the Angels’ offense on Wednesday night.
Each part of the team has failed on certain nights during this miserable stretch, but the hitters were the ones most responsible for their franchise-record 14th consecutive loss, a 1-0 defeat against the Boston Red Sox.
The Angels have lost by one run seven times during the streak.
“They all hurt,” interim manager Phil Nevin said. “No loss is fun. But we’re competing. We’re in every game. The narrative, one-run games, you’re talking about our ’pen, but our ’pen was outstanding today. Theirs was one pitch better.”
The Angels wasted effective pitching by starter Reid Detmers and relievers Archie Bradley, Jimmy Herget, Andrew Wantz and José Quijada.
Herget gave up a run in the sixth, and that was all it took for their mind-numbing streak to continue.
It wasn’t a huge surprise, because the Angels’ lineup was without Mike Trout, who is day to day with hamstring tightness. Taylor Ward and Anthony Rendon are both on the injured list. Even Luis Rengifo, who has had a few productive moments recently, was absent because he was placed on the paternity list on Wednesday.
The patchwork lineup could not even get a runner to third base, despite the mojo-fix attempted by having every hitter come to the plate to a different song by the prolific Canadian rock band Nickelback.
“I like Nickelback,” Nevin said. “The entire game I had songs in my head. … It was neat, for a while.”
Their best chance against starter Nathan Eovaldi was in the second, when Juan Lagares and Brandon Marsh started the inning with back-to-back singles. The next three hitters – Jack Mayfield, Kurt Suzuki and Tyler Wade – made outs that didn’t even move the runners, let alone drive them in.
Down by a run in the seventh, Suzuki was hit by a pitch to start the inning. Nevin summoned Max Stassi, one of his hottest hitters, to pinch-hit when the Red Sox brought in lefty Jake Diekman. Stassi grounded into a double play on the first pitch.
On the bright side, Detmers continued showing gradual improvement from the two-start hiccup that followed his no-hitter.
Detmers allowed eight runs in 9-2/3 innings in his first two starts after his May 10 no-hitter. Since then, he’s faced the New York Yankees and Red Sox without allowing a run in 8-2/3 innings.
While that’s certainly progress, he is still struggling with his pitch counts, which is why he isn’t able to get deeper into games.
“I thought he threw the ball great,” Nevin said. “We’re using too many pitches to get to the finish line with him. And that’s why we’re not getting past the fifth and sixth. He’s a young guy. He was in college a year and a half ago. He’s learning how to pitch here. These are valuable experiences for him. These are valuable games for him to go through lineups like that that are really really good. He’s just going to keep getting better each start as we’ve seen. There’s going to be an occasional hiccup, but you know when he takes the ball I think everybody out there feels really confident.”
Against the Red Sox, Detmers walked two, hit a batter and gave up three hits, while recording just 13 outs. Although two of the hits were infield hits, he was pulled after Christian Arroyo yanked a double down the left-field line.
That was the end of the night for Detmers, who left a jam for Archie Bradley with the middle of the Boston order due. Bradley got Christian Vazquez on a ground ball and then he struck out J.D. Martinez.
The Angels’ pitchers ended up making just one costly mistake – Herget left a fastball over the middle of the plate, and Bobby Dalbec hit it for an RBI double – but that was too much for the Angels to overcome.
It’s now been more than two weeks since they’ve won a game. Although the results have been poor, Nevin said – as Joe Maddon said before – that the attitude has been good.
“They’re coming to the field every day ready to play,” Nevin said. “They enjoy being here. They love coming here and they want to compete. We’ll say it until we get one. Hopefully, it’s tomorrow. We get one of these W’s, I think we run with it.”
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