ANAHEIM — As the game sped by on Sunday afternoon, winning the rubber game of the three-game series against the Kansas City Royals became more of an afterthought.
The Angels had another streak to keep alive.
They finally managed to get a hit off Royals left-hander Noah Cameron in the seventh inning, but didn’t accomplish much else in the 3-0 loss at Angel Stadium, other than keeping their name as the trivia answer for the longest tenured MLB team without getting no-hit.
Vaughn Grissom kept the streak intact that dates back to Sept. 11, 1999, by lifting a soft single out of the reach of shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. and into shallow left for a one-out single.
That turned out to be their only hit, as Cameron (7-8) followed up by retiring the next eight in a row, striking out the side in the eighth, for his first MLB complete game in his 47th start.
“You could see he was calling his own game with the PitchCom, so you know he’s got an idea of what he wants to do,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said of Cameron. “He kept us off-balance. Good cutters, ran his fastball when he needed to, but the changeup, to me, was the big pitch.”
Cameron’s performance far overshadowed the solid outing by Angels right-hander Ryan Johnson (2-7), who made it through the fifth inning for the first time in five starts. Johnson, a second-round pick of the Angels in the 2024 MLB Draft, was finished after 5⅓ innings, allowing two runs and five hits with four strikeouts and two walks.
“We talk about small gains every single day,” Suzuki said. “You can see it. His cutter was 90 (mph) and his sinker was 94, so small gains and he pitched into the sixth. … Definitely some encouraging results for RJ.”
Johnson got the first out of the fourth, but Michael Massey then lifted a full-count cutter into the front-row seats in right field for a solo home run and a 1-0 lead.
Johnson was one out from getting through the fifth without further damage, but Witt curled a solo home run into the seats left to make it 2-0.
“The solo shots don’t hurt as bad as with runners on base, so I felt like I did a good job minimizing whenever the runners were on,” Johnson said. “Just the one (to Witt) that I felt like I hung, and the other one I got behind in the count.”
Kansas City put its leadoff batter on base again in the seventh on an error by second baseman Oswald Peraza. John Rave took second on a wild pitch, moved to third on a sacrifice and scored when Peraza couldn’t glove a hard-hit grounder by Carter Jensen with the infield in, stretching the lead to 3-0.
Nine of the first 11 outs by the Angels were in the air and Cameron retired the first 15 batters overall before walking Peraza to start the sixth. Cameron got the next three batters out; however, the last on a nice backhand up the middle by Massey off the bat of Zach Neto.
The Royals loaded the bases with no outs in the second off Johnson with a pair of hard singles and a walk, but he was bailed out on a nice play at first by Grissom, who was giving Nolan Schanuel the day off.
Grissom snared a hard grounder by Isaac Collins to his left, stepped on the bag and threw home to catcher Travis de’Arnaud, who tagged out Salvador Perez.
Rave then flew out to right to end the threat.
“The defense was behind me the whole way,” Johnson said. “They were unbelievable out there, diving all over the place, getting everything. It doesn’t look anything like what it looked like without them doing a tremendous job.”
Johnson gave up another leadoff single to Kyle Isbel in the third, but struck out the next two batters on three pitches each and then got Jac Caglianone to fly out to left.
“He just needs to keep attacking,” Suzuki said of Johnson. “Just attacking the zone, executing pitches, but I think his pitch mix has gotten better and the consistency of his pitches has gotten better.”