CHICAGO — Just moments after Jack López experienced the exhilaration of his first major league home run, he felt the sting of an embarrassing gaffe.
The Angels’ second baseman failed to catch a pop-up that would have ended the eighth inning with the Angels leading by a run. The tying run scored on that play, and the go-ahead run came on a single on the next pitch.
That cost the Angels a 3-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox on Thursday night, allowing the White Sox to hold at 120 losses, which has tied the major league record.
Everything was set up for a record-breaking night, with Jack Kochanowicz pitching seven scoreless innings and the Angels taking a two-run lead on RBIs from Eric Wagaman and López.
In the bottom of the eighth, though, Hunter Strickland retired just one of the four hitters he faced, cutting the lead to 2-1. Left-hander Brock Burke entered and seemed to be out of the inning, with a flyout and a pop-up.
López, drifting into shallow center field, never seemed to be fully camped under the ball, and it dropped. He put his hands on his head in disbelief after the play.
“I just dropped it,” said López, a 31-year-old journeyman who was playing in his 29th major league game. “It sucks. Cost Jack a win. Cost Burkey a (blown) save. Cost Strick a hold. It’s a tough one to swallow. … I gotta have that.”
Manager Ron Washington said Lopez went after the ball incorrectly.
“He drifted with it,” Washington said. “You do that on a pop-up that you’re not sure if it’s going to get over your head. You just run back there and get it. But when the ball goes up like that, you got to beat the ball where it’s going. So you got to run and get behind it and then work your way back to it. I saw he was in trouble the way he was backpedaling, and then he didn’t come up with it.”
Burke then gave up a run-scoring single Andrew Benintendi, snapping the tie.
The Angels also could have helped themselves by scoring more than two runs. Strickland could have done better when he entered to face of the bottom of the order.
It added up to another ugly loss for the Angels (63-94), who are now just one loss away from equaling the franchise record.
The positive on the night was Kochanowicz, who needed just 82 pitches to get 21 outs, including 12 of them on 11 ground balls. He induced one double play, ending the seventh. That came at the end of a 10-pitch at-bat.
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“He was outstanding,” Washington said. “He gave us seven innings. In that last inning, they worked him pretty good to get through that inning. And he got through it. He had done his job.”
Kochanowicz struck out four and didn’t walk any. He used the same formula as for most of his rookie season, pounding the strike zone with sinkers.
Kochanowicz, 23, lowered his ERA to 4.01 through his first 10 major league starts, including 2.63 in the eight starts since he returned from a brief stint in Triple-A.
He might have started his final game of the season. The Angels could start him in the final game of the season, on Sunday. They could also opt to end a season that has seen him pitch 160⅓ innings across all levels, up from 94 last year.
“It’s been good,” Kochanowicz said of his current run of success. “It’s been good to just kind of build some confidence, for sure. Just to know where my feet are. Just building to next year. Just gives me some good confidence.”