ANAHEIM, Calif. — Right-hander José Soriano isn’t letting a couple of bad outings put a damper on what looks to be a breakout season.
After cruising through his first six starts with a 0.24 ERA, Soriano ran into trouble in three of his last four starts heading into Thursday night, including three earned runs given up in five innings and five earned runs in four innings against the Chicago White Sox, and six earned runs on only one hit against the Dodgers in his last start.
Soriano got the bounce-back start he was looking for, tossing 6 ⅔ innings of two-run ball, but it wasn’t enough as the Angels fell 3-2 to the Athletics.
"Pitched his butt off," Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said of Soriano. "Moved the ball around. Had had a really good breaking ball today, some good split fingers. But yeah, he was good. Should've won."
It was another start where he stuck to his strengths to find success.
Soriano’s calling card this season has been his knuckle curve, as it had the 20th-highest whiff rate of any pitch in baseball heading into Thursday at 46.2%. And on Thursday, he generated seven swings and misses out of 11 swings on the pitch. Despite landing his knuckle-curve in the strike zone just 31% of the time, it ended up being a strike 69% of the time because of his ability to get hitters to chase it out of the zone.
"I take the good, the positive things," Soriano said. "I got into the seventh. I can't complete the inning, but I feel good the way I pitched today. I helped the team the most I can. But I control what I can control."
It helped Soriano cruise through the first five innings in this one, including striking out five of the first six batters he faced. After retiring the side in order in four of the first five innings, he ran into trouble in his final two innings of work.
Catcher Shea Langeliers doubled in the sixth inning and then scored on a single by first baseman Nick Kurtz the next batter. In the seventh, third baseman Zack Gelof reached on a fielder’s choice and then scored on a single by shortstop Darell Hernaiz, ending Soriano’s night.
Soriano’s final line came out to 6 ⅔ innings of work, giving up two runs on six hits and a walk with seven strikeouts. His ERA is now 2.44 on the season.
"I feel great," Soriano said of his bounce-back start. "After the last outing, I didn't. I feel great with these results today. I'm just trying to help the team get the W."
An outing like that is usually good enough to get your team the win, but the Angels’ lineup stalled after the first inning.
First baseman Nolan Schanuel hit his first home run since April 22 for a two-run shot to give the Angels an early 2-0 lead in the first inning, but the bats only mustered one single the rest of the game and didn’t reach scoring position until the ninth inning.
In extras, right-hander Ryan Zeferjahn came in and intentionally walked Kurtz as the leadoff man with first base open, but then hit designated hitter Brent Rooker to load the bases with no outs.
Zeferjahn got a weak ground ball hit right at him, and he threw it to home plate for the force out. Then, he got a ground ball to shortstop Zach Neto that could’ve ended the inning with a double play, but second baseman Adam Frazier didn’t get a clean transfer, which caused his throw to be late to first base to allow the eventual winning run to score.
After getting out of the jam, the offense was once again blanked once again.
On the night as a whole, the Angels were limited to just five hits and struck out 12 times.
"Obviously, we'd like to come up with all these fancy solutions to how we can do better and all these things, but at the end of the day, it's get a good pitch to hit and put a good swing on it," Suzuki said.
The Angels are now 17-34 and have lost 24 of their last 30 games.