ANAHEIM — The Angels struggled to stop the bleeding in the fifth inning on Friday night, and it ended up costing them the game.
Right-handers Ryan Johnson and José Fermin each allowed home runs in a five-run fifth inning that put the Angels in a hole that they couldn’t dig themselves out of.
Despite responding with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the inning, the offense was silent the other eight innings in this one as the Angels lost, 6-2, against the Brewers.
"I felt like I was kind of battling and kind of just went into a little bit of fatigue, tiredness, and kind of got out of my rhythm," Johnson said. "Especially in that last, it kind of just fell apart with the walks and just losing feel for the whole zone. Felt like even out of the gates I was struggling to find it and get into a rhythm with kind of walking the first guy and then kind of was able to get out of it. But it was fighting the whole night."
The nightmare inning began with a leadoff walk to the nine-hole hitter, Cooper Pratt. Brice Turang made Johnson pay for it by homering to dead center field the very next at-bat.
Jackson Chourio followed that up with a single and William Contreras then walked to put runners on first and second with only one out. The walk to Contreras marked the end of the night for Johnson.
The Angels went to the bullpen and brought in Fermin, but he allowed a towering three-run home run to Jake Bauers with the first batter he faced. Fermin allowed a double to Garrett Mitchell before finally settling in and getting the two outs needed to end the inning.
In the bottom half of the inning, Vaughn Grissom stayed hot at the plate and led off the inning with a single. He’s now hitting .343 in his last 17 games.
A couple of batters later, the Angels got on the board with a two-run home run by Denzer Guzman that clanked off the wall above the yellow line in right field.
But that was it for the bats, as the Angels only mustered two hits in the other eight innings.
It was another tough outing for Johnson. He allowed five earned runs over 4 ⅓ innings on six hits and three walks while striking out three.
Command was a challenge for Johnson, as he only found the strike zone 39% of the time and only landed the first pitch for a strike at a 50% clip.
"It was just like constantly fighting hard from like pitch one," Johnson said. "I felt like I was kind of out of sync and it was like working both mentally physically to kind of 'What's going on, how do I get you know back in this, comete and figure out how to get my body in rhythm.' And it's just a taxing that kind of just wears on you (1:14) more than being at a good rhythm and sync would."
When he was in the zone, he got hit hard. Especially with his cutter and sinker.
Out of seven balls put in play against Johnson’s cutter, five of them were considered hard hit (95 mph exit velo or higher). Although he only threw his sinker eight times, two of them were put in play, and one of them was hit hard.
"Just left it over the plate," Johnson said of his cutter. "That's one that I've executed pretty well all season. That's why it hasn't gotten hit as hard and then tonight it was just over the middle of the plate and it got hit."
In total, Johnson allowed eight hard-hit balls out of 16 balls put in play.
This is the fifth time out of nine starts this season that Johnson has allowed five or more earned runs in a start. His ERA is now 7.63 on the year.