ANAHEIM — The Angels had a chance at their first sweep in two months, but the hitters came up empty.
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After winning the first two games of the series against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Angels wasted strong pitching in a 1-0 loss on Wednesday afternoon.
The Angels (41-62), whose only sweep this season was against the Texas Rangers in May, had seven hits and went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position.
Left-hander Reid Detmers gave up one run in 5⅓ innings, his second consecutive strong start since the All-Star break. He worked six scoreless innings in his last outing.
Through four innings, Detmers was cruising. He allowed just one hit, with four strikeouts and no walks.
In the fifth, though, Detmers started to wobble. He walked the first two hitters of the inning. His velocity also dipped slightly. Detmers still got out of the inning with the help of a diving stop by third baseman Vaughn Grissom, who started a double play.
Detmers came back for the sixth, and he struck out the first hitter. He then threw a 92 mph fastball over the middle and JJ Wetherholt hit it over the fence in center field.
Manager Kurt Suzuki then pulled Detmers after 85 pitches. Normally, a pitcher with that pitch count who had given up just one run and two hits would not get yanked so quickly, but the Angels clearly had seen red flags during the previous inning. Right-hander José Fermin was warming up before Detmers even took the mound in the sixth.
That run was enough to beat the Angels.
After scoring five runs in the first inning of a 5-1 victory on Tuesday night, the Angels did not score over their next 16 innings.
Their best chance was in the third, when Zach Neto doubled and then Mike Trout was hit by a pitch. But Nolan Schanuel – the hottest hitter on the team – hit a pop-up, and then Grissom struck out.
Schanuel lined into a double play to end the fifth. Trout was at first and Schanuel hit a line drive right to first baseman Alec Burleson, who stepped on the bag to end the inning.
In the ninth inning, the Angels mounted a one-out rally with two walks before Oswald Peraza and Josh Lowe both struck out.
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More to come on this story.