Angels reliever Joe Smith takes injury of Kole Calhoun tough

By foxsports
Published

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- At this point, you could take your pick. Which member of the Angels bullpen would be the next to relinquish a lead?

You could go down the list. By the numbers, it certainly was not to be Joe Smith.

In an ineffective bullpen, he was an effective one. In six appearances, he allowed just three hits, eight strikeouts, no walks, and a 0.00 ERA. Yet, on Tuesday night, he showed he, too, wasn't immune to the inadequacies succumb to the Angels' bullpen in their 10-9 11-inning loss.

Call it an aberration. Smith will call is "pretty uncharacteristic." He entered Tuesday as one of just five relievers in the American League with six appearances and six innings pitched to not have surrendered a run.  

He also called it the worst game of his career. Smith had to go back to 2011 to recall anything similar. It was Aug. 7 and Smith, a member of the Indians at the time, was in Texas facing the Rangers. He faced four batters -- gave up three hits and walked one, while allowing three runs. Tuesday night he gave up four runs.

If experiencing the worst game of his career wasn't enough, Smith had to watch the Angels try to battle back in an extra innings game and his teammate Kole Calhoun go down with an ankle injury in the bottom of the 11th.

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Calhoun was placed on the 15-day DL on Wednesday and the club added Harvard Westlake grad Brennan Boesch, who was hitting .250 for Triple-A Salt Lake, to the Major League roster.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia said Calhoun underwent more tests on Wednesday and could be out 4-6 weeks.

"Just knowing you can do your job and get it over with and then another one of your guys goes down in the late innings where if you just do your job the game is over, he doesn't get hurt, we're one guy more healthy," Smith said following Tuesday's loss. "That probably hurts the worst, just seeing a guy get hurt in extra innings when you didn't do your job."

Added Scioscia: "Joe's, maybe, being a little bit too hard on himself and it's going to happen to every reliever where you have that one outing where you just go 'Wow' and last night was Joe's and he'll be better."

Before getting injured, Calhoun posted a streak of three consecutive multi-hit games, including going 3 for 6 with a home run, a double, and three runs scored in the loss Tuesday night.