Trout’s home runs are squandered
Mariners loudly crush balls all over the field to nullify Trout’s two-homer game.
Center fielder hits two for the second game in a row, giving him an MLBbest 23 home runs.
SEATTLE — Sometimes in baseball, things don’t look good.
Other times, they don’t sound good.
And Seattle made a racket Tuesday against Jaime Barria in what became a 6-3 Angels loss.
To the rookie’s credit, the score was still tied 1-1 into the bottom of the fifth inning despite the Mariners rocketing balls all over Safeco Field.
In that inning, however, something that felt inevitable proved to be just that, Mitch Haniger finally driving a shot to a place where no Angel could get it, his tworun home run launching Seattle to victory.
All the chaos from the home team trumped another night when Mike Trout was a one-man sound machine.
For the second consecutive game, Trout homered twice, driving in all the Angels runs during a series in which they haven’t scored yet without homering.
Trout leads the majors with 23 home runs and, remember, he began Monday with two hits in his previous 19 at-bats, manager Mike Scioscia answering questions about what was wrong with the center fielder.
The four home runs in consecutive losses feeds as a fitting snapshot into the narrative of this franchise wasting the best seasons of the game’s best player.
“We’re not swinging the bats as a team,” Scioscia said. “That puts the pitchers under a lot of pressure. We’re more than Mike. One guy can’t carry you.”
Trout’s second home run brought the Angels to within 4-3 in the seventh inning, Seattle reliever Ryan Cook aiding a potential comeback by walking Ian Kinsler with two outs immediately before Trout came up.
As bad as that sounds, it’s even worse when considering that Kinsler this season is one for 24 against the Mariners.
Barria (5-2), who doesn’t turn 22 until next month, has been one of the Angels’ biggest surprises in 2018. He entered Tuesday tied for the team lead with five victories, despite being repeatedly shuttled back to triple-A Salt Lake.
Scioscia has repeatedly praised Barria’s poise and his ability to keep things together when they appear to be on the verge of crumbling.
Barria was doing that again against the Mariners but was unable to prevent the carnage this time.
Before Tuesday, baseball’s advanced metrics identified Angels pitchers as being the best in the game at missing bats.
That wasn’t the case for Barria, who struck out two batters in five innings and gave up eight hits, many of which nearly left vapor trails.
“I couldn’t locate my pitches,” Barria said through an interpreter. “Especially the fastball.”
After two innings, the Mariners led the Angels 1-0 and must have been leading everyone else in average exit velocity. Five of the first nine balls put in play against Barria left Seattle bats in excess of 100 mph.
Yet, he benefited from double-play groundouts in the first and second innings, the latter ending a basesloaded threat.
As it was, the Mariners opened that second inning with two singles and a double from their first four batters and still didn’t score.
The next inning, they didn’t score only because Trout reached to the top of the wall in center field to take back what would have been at least a run-scoring double for Nelson Cruz.
The run Barria gave up early came on a Haniger first-inning home run.
He then negotiated his way through three scoreless innings before Haniger struck again with two outs and after a catcher’s interference call on Martin Maldonado gifted Seattle a baserunner.
jeff.miller@latimes.com Twitter: @JeffMillerLAT