ANAHEIM, Calif. — Reid Detmers’ return to the starting rotation has been far from perfect, but he has turned a corner over the last month.
The left-hander was sporting a 4.26 ERA heading into his start on Wednesday, which included a blow-up outing on May 19, when he allowed eight earned runs in 5 ⅔ innings against the Athletics. Since that blow-up, Detmers has pitched to a 1.73 ERA in four starts while striking out 36 batters in 26 innings.
“Just kind of trusting my stuff,” Detmers said of his recent success. “Just kind of attacking. Staying on the attack is the main thing. Overall, just trusting everything and not trying to pinpoint everything, which is kind of the pattern I've fallen into in the past. Just trusting the stuff and going right at them. Usually, when you go right at them, good things usually happen.”
The latest installment of his torrid stretch featured seven innings of one-run ball against the Astros on Wednesday, when his only baserunner allowed was a solo home run while striking out nine. As good as the start was, the Angels still needed more, as Jose Siri’s walk-off single in the 10th inning capped off the Angels’ 3-2 victory over the Astros.
“I felt like I had a little bit of everything, which is nice,” Detmers said. “It doesn't happen very often. Fastball command was decent, but it was mostly the off-speed stuff. The changeup was good. I was missing the spots I wanted to miss, which was nice. Slider was good and curveball was good.”
It was domination from the start.
Jose Altuve softly lined out to shortstop on the first pitch of the game, then Detmers struck out five of the next six batters he faced.
Detmers carried a perfect game into the sixth inning, until he gave up a lead-off homer to Astros shortstop Shay Whitcomb. Detmers admitted he knew he was throwing a perfect game at that point, but said he wasn’t really thinking about it unless he got past the sixth inning.
He was a strike-one machine, landing his first pitches for strikes 73% of the time. Being able to start ahead in the count allowed him to get swings and misses and weak contact to limit any baserunners.
“I thought he just kind of piggybacked off what he did in LA, attacking everything with strikes,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said. “I feel like he was strike one, strike two on every batter that came up. He's definitely executing pitches. He's putting guys away. I think he had nine strikeouts tonight. And it's a testament to him. He's worked really hard and put himself in a good spot.”
Although he had all of his pitches working in this one, Detmers’ slider was notably efficient.
Detmers utilized his slider in all counts, being able to land it for a first-pitch strike seven out of eight times, got a swing and miss on 35% of his sliders thrown and landed 10 of them for called strikes. All of that to say, his slider was a strike 82% of the time and the Astros only put it in play four times, with none of them being hits.
“I was able to get ahead with it and get a lot of swings late in the count,” Detmers said of his slider. “A couple of pop flies and a couple of swings and misses for strikeouts.”
This four-start stretch of dominance has lowered his ERA to 4.00 on the season.
Offensively, there wasn’t much until extra innings.
Mike Trout hit his 15th home run of the season with a solo shot to dead center in the first inning. Logan O’Hoppe then hit a solo home run of his own in the fifth inning to make it 2-0.
O’Hoppe has struggled this season both at the plate and behind the plate, but had a solid night, going 2-for-2 with a homer and a two-strike single.
“I've mentioned the work the past couple of days with you guys, and it just feels good that it's coming together,” O’Hoppe said. “It didn't feel like a fluke, or I just ran into a ball. I knew what I was doing. I was in control of everything. I've been building for the last two weeks, I'd say, since Tampa, and I'm going to continue to do it.”
O’Hoppe also had some redemption with a play at the plate in the top of the ninth inning.
With the score tied 2-2 with two outs, Christian Walker doubled down the left field line and sent Yordan Alvarez from first to third base. Zach Neto, though, didn’t realize Alvarez held up at third and fired a throw to the play, but sailed it over O’Hoppe, and it hit Isaac Paredes, who was on deck.
Luckily, Sam Bachman was backing up the plate and delivered a throw to O’Hoppe to apply the tag to nab Alvarez at the plate to deny the go-ahead run. The call on the field by home plate umpire Ron Kulpa was safe, but the Angels challenged the call and got it overturned to end the inning.
“The throw out of (Neto’s) hand, I thought it was right in my chest, and then it took off on me, and then (Bachman) was behind me,” O’Hoppe said. “It's the little things like that that we work on all the way in spring training. So it gave me another chance at a play at the plate, too. I'm happy it worked out for sure.”
In the 10th, the Angels again excelled at the little details of the game, with pinch hitter Donovan Walton laying down a bunt to move the runner to third and also getting a single out of it to set up Siri’s two-strike walk-off single.
“It's what we work on,” Suzuki said. “We work on it, not every day, but we work on it pretty regularly. We're not gonna be perfect every time, but we're gonna work on them. And when it shows up in the game, it's good for the guys to really feel like the stuff that they're working on shows up.”