Angels’ Walbert Ureña sees strong start turn into a nightmare quickly

ANAHEIM — It took about 15 minutes for Walbert Ureña to go from the best game of his career to the worst.

The Angels right-hander retired the first 12 hitters he faced on Friday night, barely even throwing a pitch out of the strike zone.

In the fifth, though, Ureña gave up seven runs, sending the Angels on their way to a 9-3 loss to the A’s in a game that was played just over an hour after they announced that they had fired General Manager Perry Minasian.

Although the season has been bad enough to cost Minasian his job, one of the most positive developments was the emergence of the 22-year-old Ureña as a rotation fixture.

Ureña was at his best when the game began. He didn’t even throw a ball until the second inning, on his 16th pitch.

He needed just 36 pitches to get through the first four innings. He threw 35 pitches in the fifth and only recorded one out.

“I thought he was really good and then they made the adjustment on his secondary pitches,” catcher Logan O’Hoppe said. “They were taking balls off the plate and down. They were chasing him early and he was rolling. They made a really good adjustment against him.”

Ureña said he didn’t think anything was different.

“I don’t think anything changed,” he said. “I just kept attacking the zone. No hard contact. They just found a couple holes in the infield.”

It all started with a walk to Tyler Soderstrom. Ureña got an out on a ground ball, and then he issued another walk.

Max Muncy then hit a sharp grounder up the middle. Second baseman Donovan Walton got a glove on it with a backhand attempt, but the ball skipped away.

Any debate over whether the first hit of the game should be on a questionable scoring decision was short-lived, because Jeff McNeil yanked the next pitch through the hole on the right side, for an RBI single.

It snowballed after that.

Ureña gave up four more hits on his next 17 pitches. He also threw a wild pitch and was called for a balk when he made a pickoff throw to first after he had already used his two disengagements permitted by pitch timer rules.

By the time Ureña was removed, the Angels were down 7-1. The performance lifted his ERA from 2.41 to 3.14.

In Ureña’s first 12 major league starts, he had not allowed more than four runs. He had frequently demonstrated the poise to escape jams, minimizing the damage even when he didn’t have his best stuff.

Left-hander Brent Suter followed Ureña to the mound and soaked up seven more outs, allowing two runs.

At the plate, the Angels managed a run on a two-out RBI single from Walton in the fourth inning and a two-run homer from Jo Adell in the fifth. It was Adell’s 11th homer of the season.

The Angels scored three runs against A’s right-hander J.T. Ginn, who nearly pitched a no-hitter against them in May.

The Angels scored seven runs against Ginn in their next two meetings, including four runs last weekend in Sacramento.

Manager Kurt Suzuki was ejected in the seventh inning for arguing a catcher’s interference call. The A’s Henry Bolte hit O’Hoppe’s glove with his bat, but the contact was made on a check swing after O’Hoppe caught the pitch.

Bolte stole second base and ended up scoring.

“I caught the ball and he called strike three, and (Bolte) made a move that didn’t really even seem like a swing, to be honest,” O’Hoppe said. “It’s just a really frustrating error to take. And stealing base leading to a run. Tonight was one of the more frustrating nights of the year.”