The Los Angeles Angels fell to the Texas Rangers in a 7-2 loss that was highlighted by two critical errors that allowed extra runs to score, pushing the game out of reach.
Tucker Davidson started for the Angels on Wednesday after a 10-day absence to hammer out some mechanical changes and those changes resulted in five innings without issuing a walking, a clear improvement. But in the second inning, a leadoff single coupled with a wild pitch led to a throwing error by shortstop, Livan Soto, allowing a run to score.
In the bottom of the eighth inning, the Rangers mounted a rally that loaded the bases with no outs, prompting Angels manager Phil Nevin to go to his bullpen.
Nevin brought in Zack Weiss who immediately tallied a strikeout, but then allowed a single to left field, and after the throw home took an odd path, he fielded the ball and airmailed it into right field, allowing Adolis García to score, via Arianna Vedia of MLB.com:
“Where the game’s at, I understand if [there’s] more sense of urgency to stop the bleeding a little bit,” Nevin said. “Right there, [Weiss has] got to kind of take a step back. Same thing I told Soto … you don’t have to rush the ball. It’s just one of those games. We’ve been playing too well lately for it to bother us.”
The Angels can ill afford to make unnecessary errors, but on the season have been pretty middle of the pack and sit at 16th in Major League Baseball in defensive runs saved with 11, and 16th in MLB in total errors committed, with 75 heading into Thursday.
Details on Tucker Davidson’s changes
Prior to Wednesday, Davidson had been walking 6.3 batters per nine innings and his strike rate was three percent below league average. So the Angels had Davidson begin his delivery with his lead shoulder pointing towards home base, similar to pitching out of the stretch.
The result was an outing in which Davidson allowed three runs on five hits in 5.0 innings. But most importantly, Davidson did not walk any batters. It was the first time in his career that he had not given up a walk for an entire start.
Davidson spoke about the new delivery and why he feels it helped him increase his strike rate.