ANAHEIM — For an inning, it looked like it might finally be the Angels’ day.
Ryan Johnson struck out the side in the top of the first and the Angels scored two runs in the bottom of the inning.
Before long, though, things started going wrong again, and the Angels were on their way to a 7-5 loss to the Boston Red Sox on Sunday night. Their losing streak is now six games.
“We’ve just got to bring the energy every day,” manager Kurt Suzuki said. “We’ve got to bring the energy. The guys are working hard, almost overly working. Sometimes less is more. I think the energy, the enthusiasm, the effort, it’s all there. We’ve just got to keep staying with it, staying what we’re doing and things will change.”
Zach Neto was one of the most productive offensive players, with a homer among his three hits, but he also made an error that led to three runs.
“We’re grinding it out,” Neto said. “It’s a tough stretch for us right now, but we’re grinding it out. Pitchers are doing their job and the offense is just not. We’ve just got to be a little better. Today was a little better. We’re hitting better. We’re putting runners in scoring position, but we’ve just got to score more runs than the other team.”
The Angels have scored only 13 runs in the six losses. On this night, the offense would have been good enough if the pitching and defense had performed.
Johnson seemed to be dialed in when he struck out the game’s first two hitters on six pitches and then got ahead, 0-and-2, on Wilyer Abreu. Abreu fouled off the ninth pitch of the inning, denying Johnson an immaculate inning, but he still ultimately struck out on the 12th pitch of the at-bat.
The next time Johnson took the mound, he had a 2-0 lead, but it didn’t last long.
Second baseman Oswald Peraza opened the door when he couldn’t come up with a back-hand attempt at a Masataka Yoshida grounder. It was ruled a hit.
With two outs in the inning, Johnson threw a 91 mph sinker that Jarren Duran crushed 422 feet, for a game-tying two-run homer.
An inning later, Johnson seemingly had gotten the third out when Abreu hit a routine one-hopper to Neto. Neto couldn’t hold it in his glove, and by the time he picked it up and threw to first, it was too late. Neto hadn’t made an error since June 12, but he still leads the league with 14.
Johnson’s next pitch was a sinker that caught the bottom of the zone, and Willson Contreras hammered it for a three-run homer, putting the Red Sox on top, 5-3.
“I just missed it,” Neto said. “I didn’t catch it. It cost us three runs. It pretty much cost us the game.”
Johnson’s self-diagnosis was just as simple as Neto’s.
“Just started leaving pitches more over the middle, and they get hit,” he said.
Reliever Chase Silseth was charged with two more runs in the seventh, although he wasn’t hit hard. Silseth allowed three soft singles, including a popup that died on the infield grass. The more egregious issue was that he allowed two Red Sox runners to have enormous leads on a double steal, setting the stage for the two runs to score.
By that point, the Angels (36-55) were doing nothing at the plate.
From the fourth through seventh innings, they didn’t have a hit. In the sixth and seventh they went down in order on just 17 pitches.
They barely had leads in any of them. Before scoring two runs in the first inning on Sunday, their only other lead of the week was a 2-0 lead on Monday in Seattle. That was gone by the fourth inning.
Neto and Denzer Guzman led off the first on Sunday with consecutive singles. One run scored on a Jorge Soler grounder and another on a Jo Adell single. Neto drove in a run with a second-inning double. That was it until Adell drove in another run in the eighth.
Neto homered against Boston closer Aroldis Chapman in the ninth.