Angels: Their bullpen collapses as Orioles snap 19-game skid.
Joe Maddon found himself in an uncomfortable position on Wednesday night, choosing between pushing a struggling Shohei Ohtani for one more inning or instead turning the game over to a short-handed bullpen.
The Angels’ manager opted to pull Ohtani after five innings, but the bullpen could not hold the lead and the Angels lost, 10-6, to the Orioles, who snapped their 19-game losing streak, in Baltimore.
When the Angels took a 6-2 lead in the fourth, on the strength of Brandon Marsh’s first big league home run, the Orioles were staring at the sport’s first 20-game losing streak since they opened the 1988 season by going 0-21.
Ohtani had a rare off game, though, and he gave up his third homer of the night to let the Orioles pull within 6-4 in the fifth. Ohtani tried to talk Maddon into sending him back out for the sixth, but Maddon decided to pull him.
“I knew it was the right thing to do so,” Maddon said of pulling Ohtani. “He did wonderfully. He had 85 pitches after five. None of it was easy. It was probably near 100 degrees on the field with all the different influences so I thought was the right thing to do.”
Maddon said he made that decision even knowing that he “might have a difficult night” in managing the bullpen.
Steve Cishek was unavailable after pitching three of the previous days, including 28 pitches the night before. Junior Guerra and Andrew Wantz were also unavailable because of their workload. Austin Warren was placed on the injured list earlier in the day.
Maddon was able to get through two innings with the lead, but it finally fell apart in the eighth under the watch of Jake Petricka, a veteran who had been pitching in an independent league before the Angels signed him earlier this summer. The 33-yearold had been promoted to the big leagues earlier in the day for the first time since 2019.
Petricka was charged with four runs in the eighth to let the game get away.
Although he retired the two batters he faced to escape the seventh with a lead, he didn’t retire anyone in the eighth. The Orioles loaded the bases on a single, a double and an intentional walk. Petricka then walked Ramon Urias to push home the tying run.
Maddon then brought in James Hoyt, who struck out one before giving up another bases-loaded walk and a two-run double. The Orioles added another with a sacrifice fly against Sam Selman.
The Angels would not have had to dig so deep into their bullpen if Ohtani had pitched as well as he had recently.
After posting a 1.58 ERA over his last six games, lasting at least six innings in all of them, Ohtani made it just five innings, and he gave up four runs. He had not allowed more than two runs in any of those six starts, and he gave up that many in the first inning.
Ohtani gave up homers to Cedric Mullins and Anthony Santander in the first, marking the first time that Ohtani allowed multiple homers in a game.
He gave up a third homer in the fourth inning, a tworun shot to D.J. Stewart, cutting the lead to 6-4.
“I felt like the homers were a little bit ambushed,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “I need to make better pitches when they are expecting the fastball. I was happy about the fact that I was able to stay in the zone battle within the zone.”
The Angels couldn’t expand on their lead on a night when Marsh was just about the entire offense.
With three hits on Wednesday, Marsh now has 21 hits in his last 49 at-bats, including four hits on Tuesday night.
His two-run single in the second tied the score, and his three-run homer in the fourth put the Angels ahead, 6-2. Marsh’s opposite-field blast got him on the board after he barely missed homers twice earlier in the trip.
“What you’re seeing is what we thought he’s capable of,” Maddon said, “and this is just scratching the surface.”