CHICAGO — The clean games the Angels played to start the season with two victories seem far in the rear-view mirror now.
Since then they’ve dropped three in a row because of sloppy pitching, defense and decision-making, culminating with an ugly 7-2 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Monday night.
Most of the trouble on this night came from starter Ryan Johnson’s inability to find the strike zone and the defense’s problems converting two plays that should have been made.
While the Angels’ surprisingly explosive offense almost overcame the other issues in the last two games in Houston, this time they managed just five hits. They didn’t score until Yoán Moncada’s two-run homer in the seventh.
Moncada got back the two runs he cost the Angels with the second of their two defensive mistakes.
The first came in the first inning, just when Johnson seemed like he would escape his three-walk inning with only one run scoring. A pop-up fell between second baseman Oswald Peraza and center fielder Mike Trout. Two runs scored on the play.
Trout said the wind made the play difficult, but it still should have been made.
“There’s definitely movement,” Trout said. “Off the bat, it was coming in and going back to the right. Once I saw Peraza kind of like backpedaling, by the time I got there it was too late. We gotta get those balls, catch those balls. It was moving every which way in the outfield during BP, but we gotta catch it for sure.”
In the third, the Cubs had runners at second and third with one out. Peraza snagged a line drive and the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong was far enough from third that the Angels should have been able to double him off to end the inning.
Moncada, the third baseman, was playing in, but he seemingly had time to get back to the bag and take the throw. Moncada, however, didn’t get his foot to the bag. He instead tried to reach down to tag Crow-Armstrong, and he missed.
The next hitter, Moises Ballesteros, yanked a two-run single into right, making it 6-0.
“The play was so quick that when he threw it to me, I was trying to search (for the bag) with my foot but then I couldn’t find it,” Moncada said through an interpreter. “I just went and tagged him.”
Manager Kurt Suzuki said he understood the difficulty of the play.
“I’m assuming just because of how fast the ball got to second base for the out, he probably didn’t have time to get back to third, so he figured the best route was to tag him,” Suzuki said. “It’s an instinct play, which was a good instinct play. Obviously, the best-case scenario we find the bag but if he didn’t think he could get there fast enough, he made the right play.”
All of the runs were charged to Johnson, who lasted 3⅓ innings in his first major league start.
The Angels surprisingly put Johnson in the bullpen last year, without him throwing a single pitch in the minors. When he struggled, the Angels sent him down to Class-A and made him a starter.
Johnson was good enough in the minors and in spring training to impress Angels management, and he was rewarded with a spot in the rotation. One of the things the Angels have loved about Johnson is his control. This spring he walked five in 20⅔ innings.
When he took the mound at Wrigley Field on Monday, he didn’t bring his normal control with him. His first seven pitches were balls, most of them not even competitive pitches.
“Definitely had some nerves,” Johnson said. “Just was too timid, wasn’t aggressive. Just needed to go out there and attack. I kind of was too much on my heels.”
Johnson ended up walking the bases loaded, with one out. One run scored on a sacrifice fly.
“It’s unlike him to walk guys, but sometimes you don’t have your command and you gotta battle,” Suzuki said. “He battled. He did the best he could with what he had. Unfortunately we came up on the losing side.”
After Johnson gave up three in the first, he followed with a clean second. Then things went sideways again in the third, starting with a Nico Hoerner homer.
Johnson said he feels like he’ll be better now that the nerves from his first start are gone.
“I feel like it’s good to get that first one out of the way,” Johnson said. “Now it’s a building point for the next one.”