SAN DIEGO — The Angels’ bats went silent again.
After a couple of weeks of improving offense, the Angels lost, 5-1, to the Padres on Wednesday night, dropping the rubber game of the series.
The Angels had scored at least four runs in seven of their previous 10 times, but this game brought back memories of the recent three-week stretch when their offense could barely muster a whimper.
The Angels had four hits, including Taylor Ward’s 10th home run of the season.
Coming into the game, the Angels seemed to have a chance at a good night against Padres right-hander Randy Vasquez. Even though he had a respectable 3.76 ERA, Vasquez had walked 25 hitters and struck out 18 in 38⅓ innings. A pitcher should typically have two or three times as many strikeouts as walks.
In six innings against Vasquez, the Angels struck out five times and walked once. The lack of walks was more about Vasquez having better control than the Angels lacking discipline. Their 30% rate of swings at pitches out of the zone was only slightly worse than the major league average of 28%.
The Angels blew a good scoring opportunity in the third, when Matthew Lugo led off with a double and went to third on a fly ball. Zach Neto hit a pop-up, Nolan Schanuel walked and Yoán Moncada struck out.
The Angels (17-25) didn’t get another runner into scoring position.
The poor production at the plate wasted a solid night from the starter Kyle Hendricks, who gave up three runs – all on one pitch – in six innings.
In the first inning, Hendricks gave up back-to-back one-out singles to Luis Arraez and Manny Machado. An out later, Xander Bogaerts fought him through a long at-bat, fouling off three straight two-strike pitches. On the ninth pitch of the battle, Hendricks threw changeup over the middle of the plate, and Bogaerts drilled it over the left field fence, for a three-run homer.
After that, though, Hendricks clamped down on the Padres. He gave up just two hits and a walk through the next five innings. The Padres did not have two baserunners in any of those innings.
Hendricks was effective at getting soft contact. The Padres didn’t swing at miss at one of his pitches until his 65th pitch of the night, in the fifth inning. That was one of two whiffs in a strikeout of No. 9 hitter Martin Maldonado.
Left-hander Reid Detmers was the first pitcher out of the bullpen, and he had a second straight scoreless outing after his disastrous three-outing stretch last week.
The Padres padded the lead with two runs in the eighth, thanks to an error from Moncada and two José Fermin walks. Although the runs were unearned, it snapped Fermin’s four-game scoreless streak.
More to come on this story.