ANAHEIM ― In three games against the Miami Marlins, the Angels went 3 for 28 with runners in scoring position.
There were other missteps along the way to a rare home sweep, and their first shutout loss since August of last year, but the Angels’ lack of clutch hitting loomed large over a 2-0 loss Sunday before an announced crowd of 36,345 at Angel Stadium.
The Angels (28-26) went 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position and left 11 runners on base.
“They pitched us well,” Manager Phil Nevin said of the Marlins (28-26). “We hit some balls at people. We’ve got to score more runs. You’re going to go through times like this during a season. We know that. Some good arms over there kept us down for three days.”
Hitting was not the Angels’ strength in any situation Sunday. Rookie sensation Eury Perez and five relievers limited them to five hits, but Miami pitchers also issued eight walks. The Angels did nothing to take advantage.
In the fifth inning, Perez walked Taylor Ward and Livan Soto with one out. With two outs, Mike Trout took a liking to a 1-and-1 slider. He caught it a bit too close to the end of his bat, however, and the ball came to rest in Bryan De La Cruz’s glove in left field to end the inning.
In the seventh inning, Zach Neto doubled with one out. With two outs, Trout was walked intentionally with first base open, and left-hander Tanner Scott hustled in from the bullpen to face Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani swung and missed at two of the four pitches he saw, including a two-strike fastball over the plate.
Finally, in the ninth inning, pinch hitter Chad Wallach led off with a single against right-hander JT Chargois, who was in search of his first career save. After Ward grounded into a double play, Neto walked and Hunter Renfroe doubled, giving the Angels runners on second and third with two outs.
That brought up Trout again, whose soft flare into shallow right field was easily tracked down by second baseman Luis Arraez for the final out of the game. Trout finished 0 for 4 after going 2 for 4 in each of the series’ first two games.
Ohtani batted 1 for 12 in the series with five strikeouts.
“I’m not worried about them,” Nevin said of the Angels’ superstars. “They come out of it and they go crazy. It so happens that right now both of them aren’t at their best, maybe, but still we get to a point in the game where … Mike’s up there with a chance to win it or tie it. I’ll take that every day.”
Angels starter Patrick Sandoval (3-4) absorbed the hard-luck loss. The left-hander allowed two runs in six innings, deftly working around eight hits and two walks. He helped himself with a pair of slick plays on defense, fielding a comebacker behind his back in the first inning and leaping off the mound to catch a bunt pop-up in the third.
Marlins catcher Nick Fortes opened the scoring with a solo home run in the third inning. In the sixth inning, the Angels intentionally walked Yuli Gurriel with first base open to pitch to Jean Segura instead.
Segura, who began the day with a .196 batting average, punched an RBI single into right field, then flipped his bat en route to first base.
Other than those two blemishes, it was a marked improvement from Sandoval’s previous start, when he pitched through a bout of food poisoning on the losing end of a 6-2 defeat against Minnesota. Sandoval said he needed “a while” to recover from the illness, but it did not affect his preparation for Sunday’s game.
“Getting through six with two runs, giving my team a chance to win – that’s all you can do,” he said. “The stuff will come.”
Overall, Sandoval’s velocity on his fastball and sinker are down about 1 mph compared to last season, from 93 to 92. The swing-and-miss rate on his changeup and slider – the two pitches he throws most – are down as well.
The Angels begin a three-game series against the White Sox on Monday. They concluded their nine-game homestand 5-4 after sweeping the Boston Red Sox and taking two of three games from the Minnesota Twins before losing three straight to Miami.
“It’s not a good taste in our mouth, obviously, after the way the homestand was going,” Nevin said. “At the end of the day, we won more than we lost. Certainly not what we were setting out to do after what we accomplished for the first two series against two good teams. We didn’t play our best this weekend. That’s no secret.”
