ANAHEIM — For the past three months, José Soriano has been on a rollercoaster ride of extremes.
The Angels right-hander has started 13 games in that span, allowing two runs or fewer in eight of them and five runs or more in the others.
In three of the bad ones, he’s allowed at least seven runs, including a rough start in the Angels’ 7-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night.
This game was essentially a microcosm of the season for Soriano. He started with three hitless innings, getting the Rays to hit one harmless ground ball after another.
In the fourth, though, he needed 33 pitches to get three outs, and he gave up seven runs on seven hits.
There were hard hit balls, like Brandon Lowe’s two-run homer, and two other hits with exit velocities of 100 mph or harder.
And there were softly hit balls that found holes, and a chopper that was hit too high for second baseman Christian Moore to make a play.
There was even a squeeze bunt that Soriano fielded and then flipped home, although not accurately enough to get an out.
Despite the poor results, the Angels didn’t get anyone warming up in the bullpen until after Soriano had allowed six runs.
The nightmarish inning spoiled a three-game stretch in which Soriano had posted a 2.25 ERA, seemingly getting his season back on track after some shaky performances in the first half of July.
Soriano now has a 4.01 ERA after 24 starts, which is up from the 3.42 mark he posted during his encouraging first year as a starter. He pitched only 113 innings last season, and he’s already up to 137 this year.
Soriano has insisted that he still feels good. The Angels have given no indication that they plan to limit his workload, although it would be reasonable to continue asking the question if the Angels are not in the race in September.
Besides Soriano’s poor performance, the ugliest moment of the night was provided by third base coach Bo Porter.
The Angels didn’t have a hit against Rays starter Ryan Pepiot in the first four innings, but they started getting to him in the fifth. Taylor Ward reached on an error and then Jo Adell hit a two-run homer. Logan O’Hoppe walked and then Moore split the right-center field gap with a line drive that went to the wall.
Porter waved O’Hoppe home. The Rays made two good throws, and O’Hoppe was out by a few feet. Porter’s decision went against the baseball tenet that you never make the first out of an inning at home plate. The decision was even more egregious because the Angels were down by five runs.
The Angels kept hitting Pepiot, including Oswald Peraza’s infield hit in the fifth and two hits and a walk in the sixth. They might have gotten back into the game if they hadn’t given away that out.
More to come on this story.