The Los Angeles Angels opened up a three-game set against Major League Baseball’s worst team, the Oakland Athletics. Entering Friday, the Athletics had a league-high 95 losses compared to only 39 wins. But it would be hard to tell with the way they dismantled Phil Nevin’s Angels on Friday night in Oakland.
The Angels took a 9-2 blowout loss at the hands of the 95-loss Athletics. Starter Patrick Sandoval gave up five runs in the fourth inning and was removed before the end of the frame. Jaime Barria gave up another four runs in the seventh and eighth frames.
At the plate, the Angels tallied two runs on seven hits, with both runs coming in the final innings with an eighth-inning RBI double from Brandon Drury and a ninth-inning solo homer from Logan O’Hoppe. O’Hoppe was the only Angels player with multiple hits on the day.
Nevin was succinct when discussing the Halos performance in the series opener, according to Jeff Fletcher of The O.C. Register:
“There wasn’t much good tonight at all,” Manager Phil Nevin said.
Sandoval went further in depth on what went wrong for him, specifically in the fourth inning when he allowed five runs on five hits.
“Terrible,” Sandoval said. “I couldn’t find the zone. Then later in my outing when I did, they were ready for the pitches that were coming. When you can’t really find the zone with your offspeed stuff, you’ve got to stick with your fastball and they’re big league hitters. They’re gonna hit stuff that’s straight.”
The Angels are no longer in a position where they are competing for the postseason. However, bad losses like this to the worst team in the league are not encouraged. The goal for the remainder of the season is to develop young players and remain competitive in individual games.
The only silver lining on that front was that Kyren Paris — a rookie in his MLB debut from Double-A — reached base safely three times with a hit by pitch, a walk and an error. This to go along with the two-hit effort from O’Hoppe. Rookie Nolan Schanuel lost his 10-game hit streak by going 0-for-3 with a walk.
Schanuel set Angels record
Although he lost the streak on Friday, he had already cemented his place in Angels history by being the first player to secure a hit in each of their first 10 games in the Majors as a member of the Angels.
He broke the previous franchise record of nine games set by David Eckstein.
