Angels' struggles consume pitching, hitting
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- A closed-door meeting Sunday afternoon didn't help, and the arrival of the struggling Cleveland Indians provided no relief Monday night. So what do the Angels do now?
They wait -- wait for their pitching to get better and for their offense to rise up again.
"It's time for guys to hitch up their bootstraps, get out there and get after it and play ball the way we can on both ends," manager Mike Scioscia said after another loss, this one 6-2 to the Indians at Angel Stadium.
It's beginning to feel like the first month of the season when the Angels stumbled to an 8-15 record and shows no signs of recovering. But eventually they did, and if they're going to be players in the American League West race -- or, more likely, the wild card -- they'll have to do it again.
The defeat was their fifth in six games and ninth in 12 games, and it came against a Cleveland team that had dropped 21 of its previous 29 games. But Indians starter Justin Masterson carried a shutout into the seventh inning, and the bullpen closed it out despite a two-run homer from Albert Pujols in the eighth.
The Angels' recent concerns have been about their starting pitching, but now, the offense can't get in sync. They've scored just three runs in the past two games and were hitless in nine at-bats with runners in scoring position Monday. In their past 39 at-bats with runners in scoring position, they have just five hits.
"How many of those balls were bullets?" Scioscia responded when he was asked about his team's failures with men on base. "I'm not going to say there weren't some flies in the ointment as far as what we were doing, but there's no doubt in those first four or five innings we hit the ball hard with nothing to show for it."
True, but the Angels stranded a total of five runners over the last four innings, and catcher Chris Iannetta twice took called third strikes with runners in scoring position.
A team that's struggling on the mound can't afford to let those opportunities escape, but that's what the Angels have been doing lately.
At least they got an improved performance from starter CJ Wilson, who pitched into the seventh before he tried to stop a line drive off the bat of Cleveland's Lou Marson with his bare hand and left the game.
Wilson was taken to a nearby hospital for X-rays, which were negative. He's day to day but said he hopes to make his next start.
"It's just a competitive thing," he said of trying to catch the ball with his pitching hand. "You're going out there trying to do everything you can to win the game and prevent runs."
Wilson, who hasn't won in his previous nine starts, gave up three runs, but a third-inning error by second baseman Howie Kendrick helped set up a two-run inning, and a home run by Brent Lillibridge in the fourth gave the Tribe a 3-0 lead.
Given the way the Angels have been hitting in recent days, any kind of deficit looks large.
"It starts with our starting pitching," Scioscia said. "That's the heartbeat of our club. We need to go out there from pitch one to as far as they can go and give us a chance to get settled in the game and give us a chance to do some of the things we can do."
Right now, that's not happening. At a time when the Angels need everything to come together, it seems to be slowly falling apart.
"We believe in each other," Wilson said. "It's slipping through our fingers a little bit and that's frustrating because those games are there for us to win and we haven't closed the deal on offense or defense or pitching."