ANAHEIM — The way the Angels have been hitting, it seemed like it would take a shutout from their starting pitcher for them to snap a seven-game losing streak.
They nearly got one from an unlikely source, soft-throwing right-hander Kyle Hendricks allowing one run and four hits over 7⅔ innings and the Angels busting out for four runs in the sixth inning of a 5-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers in Angel Stadium.
Hendricks gave up just two singles and faced one batter over the minimum through seven innings before making his only mistake, an elevated curveball that Spencer Torkelson belted for a solo homer in the eighth.
The former Capistrano Valley star, who went 0-3 with a 6.65 ERA in his first five starts this season, struck out three and walked none to earn his first win in an Angels uniform after signing a one-year, $2.5-million deal with his hometown team over the winter.
Hendricks masterfully mixed his 79-mph changeup, 86-mph sinker, 72-mph curve and a sprinkling of 87-mph fastballs to keep a Tigers team that had pounded the Angels for 19 runs and 27 hits in the first two games of the series off-balance. He did not throw one pitch faster than 88.3 mph.
Detroit scored once off Angels left-hander Brock Burke in the ninth, but Angels closer Kenley Jansen, who gave up six runs and six hits in the ninth inning of Friday night’s loss, recorded the final two outs for his seventh save.
The Tigers gift-wrapped the first run of the game for the Angels when right fielder Kerry Carpenter and center fielder Riley Greene collided on a Kyren Paris routine fly ball to the gap with two outs in the second inning.
The ball dropped for an error that was charged to Carpenter, allowing Travis d’Arnaud, who led off with a double to left and took third on Luis Rengifo’s groundout to second, to score for a 1-0 lead.
The Angels pushed the lead to 5-1 with a four-run sixth, a rally that began with singles by Nolan Schanuel and Jorge Soler off Tigers right-hander Jack Flaherty, the former Westlake-Harvard High star who helped the Dodgers win the World Series last year.
Taylor Ward flied out to center, but d’Arnaud walked to load the bases, and Rengifo grounded a first-pitch curve into center field for a two-run single and a 3-1 lead.
Gustavo Campero struck out, but Paris, mired in a 2-for-40 slump in which he had struck out 23 times and walked once, roped a two-run single to left field to make it 5-1 and knock Flaherty out of the game.
The Angels had lost 15 of 19 games entering Saturday, the primary culprit a feeble offense that hit .194 with a .574 OPS, 46 runs–an average of 2.4 a game–198 strikeouts and 29 walks in 645 plate appearances during the stretch.
Manager Ron Washington has tried just about everything to snap the Angels out of their three-week funk – shaking up the lineup, shuffling the rotation, employing some relievers in higher leverage situations – but he hasn’t felt a need to air out players as a group.
“I’ve had many conversations with this team,” Washington said before Saturday night’s game. “I’m tired of having meetings. I’ve had a lot of meetings. And sometimes when you have too many meetings, it falls on deaf ears. I’ll call a meeting when I think it’s important.
“Right now, it’s not like we’re playing terrible baseball. The score might look like it. We just have to start getting some outs late in the game, and if we start getting outs late in the game, that will turn it around. The attitude is good. The atmosphere in the clubhouse and dugout is good. We just have to figure out a way to win some ballgames.”
Washington also doesn’t feel compelled to channel Earl Weaver and go ballistic on an umpire to fire up the club.
“What’s that gonna do?” he said. “I don’t come to the ballpark to get thrown out. I don’t have to kick my hat to show my players how much I care about the game and how they perform. Sometimes, as a player, you gotta handle your own business. I’m not gonna be nitpicking. Because you start nitpicking, umpires feel that and take it out on you.”
More to come on this story.
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