ANAHEIM — A few softly hit balls – one the Angels converted into an out and two the Baltimore Orioles didn’t – decided Wednesday afternoon’s series finale.
The Angels won, 7-6 in 10 innings, with Logan O’Hoppe’s game-winning “hit” traveling about 15 feet from the plate.
“It’s just one of those freak plays where it worked out,” O’Hoppe said, adding that “a win’s a win. That’s why we do it. I think it looks pretty good in my eyes.”
Things were looking bleak for the Angels when starter José Soriano gave up five runs in the first three innings, another rough outing in what has been a two-month slump. Thanks to the work of the bullpen, the Angels were still down by the same 5-2 score in the eighth, which is when things started to turn.
The Angels scored three runs with two outs in the eighth, on Vaughn Grissom’s RBI single and Wade Meckler’s two-run single.
In the top of the 10th, right-hander Chase Silseth nearly escaped, thanks to his own slick defense. With runners at the corners, Silseth induced a dribbler in front of the plate. He raced to it, fielded it and then flipped it with his glove to his catcher, O’Hoppe, who slapped the tag on Blaze Alexander. O’Hoppe was telling Silseth to throw to first, conceding the run.
“I saw him running down the line, I saw Logan (saying) ‘one, one, one,’” Silseth said. “I saw (Alexander) kind of right there to the right and, probably not going to get him at first, so might as well go for it. We work on it in spring training with the glove flips going to home. It paid off.”
Had the Angels not converted that out, the inning “could have been really bad,” Manager Kurt Suzuki. Instead, it was manageable, with the Orioles scoring a single run on Pete Alonso’s two-out bloop single.
In the bottom of the inning, the Angels were down to their last out when Nolan Schanuel hit a routine grounder to the right side. Second baseman Jeremiah Jackson fielded it, but pitcher Keegan Akin couldn’t handle the flip to first. He and Alonso were both converging on first, perhaps leading to confusion of who was taking the throw.
The ball hit off Schanuel and shot all the way down the right field line, allowing him to get to third.
O’Hoppe then stepped to the plate and hit a dribbler that catcher Samuel Bassalo fielded as Schanuel was heading toward the plate. Bassalo might have had a shot at O’Hoppe at first, but he instead lunged to try to tag Schanuel, and Schanuel eluded him, scoring the winning run.
The Angels trailed 5-2 in the third inning after another rough Soriano start, but relievers Mitch Farris, José Fermin, Samy Natera Jr. and Sam Bachman combined to hold the Orioles to two baserunners over six scoreless innings.
“Just picking each other up is what this team does,” Silseth said. “It’s what we want to do. It’s what we rely on. Sori just didn’t have his stuff today and it’s going to happen. It’s baseball. We want to pick him up in any way we can.”
The bullpen and the offense spared Soriano from a loss on a day when he continued to struggle. Soriano’s slump has now been twice as long as the hot streak that had Angels fans so excited.
Soriano was the American League Pitcher of the Month in April with an ERA of 0.84. There was talk of a spot in the All-Star Game and the Cy Young race. Fans were clamoring for the Angels to lock him up with a new contract.
Since then, Soriano has a 5.50 ERA in 10 starts. He’s walked 32 hitters in 52⅓ innings. He’s also allowed nine home runs in those games, which is only three fewer than he gave up all of last season. Soriano has one quality start in those 10 outings, a 7⅔-inning, one-run performance on May 10 at Toronto.
Soriano said he’s physically fine, but clearly something is wrong with the way he’s pitched.
“I don’t think concerned’s the right word,” Suzuki said. “Looking for solutions. Looking for ways to help him. The mentality, the work ethic, the will to get better each and every time he goes out there is there. Like I said from the beginning, he’s our guy. He’s going to keep going out there and then giving us his best every time.”
On Wednesday, he got through an encouraging first inning on eight pitches, before everything went wrong.
In the second, he hung a splitter to Samuel Bassalo, the Orioles’ 21-year-old slugging catcher. Bassalo obliterated it, sending it 434 feet into the seats in right-center field.
An inning later, Soriano walked Leody Tavares and then gave up two more rockets: a Pete Alonso RBI double and Bassalo’s second two-run homer of the game.
“I just missed a couple of pitches,” Soriano said. “Sometimes that happens. When you miss pitches in the middle, that’s going to happen.”