CLEVELAND — Game after game, the Angels are leaving themselves no margin for error.
The hitters wasted opportunities all night in a 3-2 loss to the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday night.
It was the 13th time in their last 22 games that they have scored two runs or fewer, a stretch of games in which they’ve gone 5-17.
The anemic offensive performance made a loser of Walbert Ureña on a night when he gave up just two runs. An error by third baseman Oswald Peraza led to an unearned run against reliever Drew Pomeranz in the seventh, and that turned out to be the difference in the game.
The Angels (16-27) were hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position, including four of their 13 strikeouts. They left 10 runners on base.
“When when you’re struggling to score runs, you get guys in scoring position, guys tend to try too hard,” Manager Kurt Suzuki said. “And when you try too hard, you start chasing, you start doing things that are uncharacteristic and that’s literally what happens. I’ve been there and I know what they’re feeling, I know what they’re going through. You just got to go out there and we just got to try to have a good at-bats. As easy as it we make it seem it’s not. But at the same time, we just got to do our best to go up there and not think of the situation and not try so hard to be the guy. Just have good at-bats. These guys, they have good at-bats to get them on. You get scuffling a little bit. You start trying too hard.”
The Angels have hit .207 with runners in scoring position in their last 22 games.
“We talk about it every day,” Suzuki said. “You get into that moment, the game speeds up a little bit and you get this urge to be that guy and then you start chasing and doing things uncharacteristic and then you strand them. … We’ve just got to get back to having good at-bats in big situations and and let the game dictate itself instead of trying to try so hard.”
The most frustrating moments came in the seventh inning, after Zach Neto and Mike Trout had drawn back-to-back one-out walks. With the tying run in scoring position, Nolan Schanuel struck out on three pitches. Jorge Soler then got ahead, 3-and-1, before he also struck out swinging at a pitch out of the zone.
The Angels also had two on and one out in the first inning, two on and two outs in the third and a runner at second with one out in the fifth.
The Angels scored single runs in the sixth and eighth. Peraza tripled down the right-field line as a pinch-hitter for Yoán Moncada in the sixth. He scored on a Jo Adell sacrifice fly. Vaughn Grissom hit a homer in the eighth, his second of the season, to cut the deficit to 3-2.
Grissom, however, lamented that he left four runners on base in his first two at-bats.
“The good teams get that big hit,” Grissom said. “Usually the teams who get that hit win the game. It sucks. We’d like to have those back.”
Ureña had another solid game, allowing two runs in five innings. He has a 3.51 ERA in five starts and has allowed more than two runs only once.
On Tuesday night he gave up a solo homer to Angel Martinez in the third inning. In the fifth, he clearly started to lose some command. He walked Daniel Schneemann, who went to second on a wild pitch. Martinez then nearly hit another homer, but right fielder Jo Adell robbed it. Schneemann still went to third on the fly ball, and he scored on a ground ball, giving the Guardians a run without a hit.
“I thought he pitched well,” Suzuki said of Ureña. “This team, whatever they’re doing, they don’t chase. They don’t chase. He did a good job. Unfortunately he gave up a one-handed homer. That guy’s strong. And that was a good piece of hitting. He stayed back on the changeup, did a nice job and snuck it out of here.”