The Los Angeles Angels sent Grayson Rodriguez to the mound against the Giants, but it didn't go well.
The Los Angeles Angels had to endure yet another problematic start from Grayson Rodriguez, as the Angels came from behind to force extra innings but wound up losing 7-6 to the San Francisco Giants in ten innings.
The long ball was Rodriguez’s undoing in this one, as the Giants erased a 1-0 Angels lead in the first inning with a two-run homer from Rafael Devers, and they padded their lead in the third wiht a thre-run bomb from Casey Schmitt to give the San Franciso a 6-1 advantage.
The Angels did manage to claw their way back into the game, though. They scored three in the fifth on a two-run triple from Tyler Heineman, then added another run when Mike Trout got Heineman home with a sacrifice fly.
That made it 5-4, but the Giants added a run in the seventh inning via a sac fly from Daniel Susac. The Angels countered with a two-run homer from Vaughn Grissom in the eighth to tie the game at 6-6, which set the stage for bonus baseball.
But the Angels couldn’t score in the tenth as Wade Meckler hit into a double play off reliever Caleb Killian, which left the Giants with a golden opportunity to win the game. Devers did the honors off reliever Chase Silseth, as his opposite-field single scored pinch-runner Jesus Rodriguez and give the Giants the 7-6 win.
Rodriguez offered some classic whistling-in-the-dark quotes after the game that indicated that he’s not feeling what the rest of us are seeing.
“My delivery was much better,” Rodriguez said in a piece written by Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. “The line doesn't really show any progress to be made, but for me, this was a big week in getting back into a delivery that I had in '24 and the bullpen leading up to this was good. And then tonight, I felt like I did those things right. I felt like my stuff played better.”
At this point Rodriguez is basically doing live rehab starts at the big-league level, and manager Kurt Suzuki is backing him up, mostly because he really doesn’t have much choice.
“Obviously, a couple balls that he left up in the zone were mistakes that got hit,” Suzuki said. “You're getting away with those things when you're going good. Right now, the mistakes are getting hit. But his offspeed stuff was a lot better tonight. He threw some good sliders, some better changeups, so there's a lot of positives in there.”
Those positives didn’t include Rodriguez’s pitch count, which climbed to 80 just to get through four innings. He recognized the importance of throwing strikes, but the right-hander doesn’t actually do it.
“Being a starting pitcher, you got to be efficient,” Rodriguez said. “And throwing first-pitch strikes is a big part of that.”
