Telepeer

Angels’ hitters go quietly in loss to Padres

May 15, 2025

SAN DIEGO — The Angels’ bats went silent again.

After a couple of weeks of improving offense, the Angels lost, 5-1, to the Padres on Wednesday night, dropping the rubber game of the series.

The Angels had scored at least four runs in seven of their previous 10 games, but this game brought back memories of the recent three-week stretch when their offense could barely muster a whimper.

The Angels had four hits, including Taylor Ward’s 10th home run of the season.

“We tried,” Manager Ron Washington said. “We put ourselves in some positions to get something done. We just couldn’t come up with a base hit. … We just couldn’t get anything going, especially the middle of our lineup. It just didn’t get anything going tonight.”

Coming into the game, the Angels seemed to have a chance at a good night against Padres right-hander Randy Vasquez. Even though he had a respectable 3.76 ERA, Vasquez had walked 25 hitters and struck out 18 in 38⅓ innings. A pitcher should typically have two or three times as many strikeouts as walks.

In six innings against Vasquez, the Angels struck out five times and walked once. The lack of walks was more about Vasquez having better control than the Angels lacking discipline. Their 30% rate of swings at pitches out of the zone was only slightly worse than the major league average of 28%.

“He had a good night,” shortstop Zach Neto said. “He was making his pitches. We hit some mistakes he made, but he didn’t make a lot of mistakes. You know, you’ve got to tip your cap to him. He had an outstanding game. Just move on to the next.”

The Angels blew a good scoring opportunity in the third, when Matthew Lugo led off with a double and went to third on a fly ball. Neto hit a pop-up, Nolan Schanuel walked and Yoán Moncada struck out.

“He threw me a good pitch, and I swung at it,” Neto said. “I missed my pitch to hit and then I go up and chase his.”

The Angels (17-25) didn’t get another runner into scoring position.

The poor production at the plate wasted a solid night from the starter Kyle Hendricks, who gave up three runs – all on one pitch – in six innings.

In the first inning, Hendricks gave up back-to-back one-out singles to Luis Arraez and Manny Machado. An out later, Xander Bogaerts fought him through a long at-bat, fouling off three straight two-strike pitches. On the ninth pitch of the battle, Hendricks threw changeup over the middle of the plate, and Bogaerts drilled it over the left field fence, for a three-run homer.

“Just got to keep focusing on just trying to make a good pitch,” Hendricks said. “He just put a really good at-bat together. Don’t want to walk him to load the bases necessarily, but don’t want to give in. So it’s a fine line you’re kind of toeing. And again, just a good hitter. Put a good swing on it. Just got to move on.”

After that, though, Hendricks clamped down on the Padres. He gave up just two hits and a walk through the next five innings. The Padres did not have two baserunners in any of those innings.

Hendricks was effective at getting soft contact. The Padres didn’t swing at miss at one of his pitches until his 65th pitch of the night, in the fifth inning. That was one of two whiffs in a strikeout of No. 9 hitter Martin Maldonado.

Left-hander Reid Detmers was the first pitcher out of the bullpen, and he had a second straight scoreless outing after his disastrous three-outing stretch last week.

The Padres padded the lead with two runs in the eighth, thanks to an error from Moncada and two José Fermin walks. Although the runs were unearned, it snapped Fermin’s four-game scoreless streak.

Overall, this loss didn’t seem as painful for the Angels as the night before, when they blew a two-run lead in the eighth. After this one, they seemed more willing to shrug it off and give credit to the Padres, whose 27-15 record is the third-best in the majors.

“That’s a really good team over there,” Hendricks said. “We’ve got to realize that. We still played some good baseball, had a chance to take the series, if not sweep. We were in all three games. So we got to take that as a positive.”

Orange County Register

News Details

Angels’ hitters go quietly in loss to Padres

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

News

CONTACT INFO

QUICK LINKS

SERVICES

CURRENT NEWS