The Los Angeles Angels went with an opener to get to Alek Manoah, which turned out to be a very bad idea.
The Los Angeles Angels bullpen has been blowing a lot of games in the late innings lately, but tonight they turned the formula upside down as the bullpen gave up seven runs in the first three innings in a 7-2 loss to the Cleveland Guardians.
This one was over early, to say the least. The Angels elected to go with an opener to give Alek Manoah his first extended outing of the season. Brent Suter did his job with a 1-2-3 first against an offense that struggles to score runs, but Suter and fellow reliever Jose Fermin came completely undone from there.
The Guardians opened their scoring in the second on a series of singles by Kyle Manzardo, David Fry and Brayan Rocchio, with Rocchio’s hit driving in a pair of runs.
After that the Angels held a walk-a-thon in the third. Fermin started the merry-go-round by walking the bases loaded, Kirby Yates completed the sequence by walking home a run. Daniel Schneeman lofted a soft single to right to get two more runs in, and a double by Travis Bazzana drove in two more and essentially ended the game.
There was a bit of a bright spot for the Halos, however. Manoah finally got in the game in the fourth, and he pitched five shutout innings and gave up just two hits, although control is still a working concept for Manoah as he walked walked five hitters. Angels pitchers wound up walking ten hitters on the night, and as bad a route as this was, it probably could have been a lot worse given that many free passes.
The Angels did plate a pair of token runs to avoid the shutout, with one coming on an RBI single by Jo Adell and the other coming in the ninth an another RBI single, this one from Vaughn Grissom.
Joe Cantillo pitched six strong shutout innings to get the win for the Guardians, and he was followed by three relievers who did mop-up duty. Suter took the loss, but there were no pitching winners on the Angels staff in this one other than Manoah, who looked like he could be joining the rotation soon.
The Angels came into this one having lost 27 of their last 31 games in Cleveland, although a couple of those games came in proxy road stadiums. They showed no signs of being able to improve on that record tonight, but Walbert Urena will take the mound tomorrow night against Slade Cecconi of Cleveland to try and turn things around.