Bullpen can’t curtail stumbles in Anaheim

ANAHEIM — Oakland appeared so close to ending its run of poor performances at Angel Stadium on Friday night, with local boy Matt Chapman providing the heroics to set up a nice little story line.

The A’s bullpen shot that all to heck, with Daniel Coulombe coming particularly unraveled in the Angels’ four-run seventh inning. Oakland fell — collapsed, really — in an 8-6 loss that extended the team’s losing streak at Anaheim to seven games.

“Everything that could go wrong did,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We made our own bed as far as that one.”

With the A’s leading by two in the seventh, Coulombe walked all three men he faced to start the inning, turning over a major challenge to Blake Treinen. “You’ve got to make them hit their way on,” said Melvin, who lost his seventhand eighth-inning relievers when Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson were traded last month. “Unfortunately, he just couldn’t find the strike zone today.”

Coulombe had no explanation for his poor outing. Things went well when he warmed up in the bullpen, then it all fell apart. “I don’t know,” Coulombe said. “It was just one of those nights. Sometimes you have those nights. You hope they don’t happen very often.”

Treinen, who is now filling Oakland’s closer role, struck out C.J. Cron, but pinch-hitter Luis Valbuena poked a single to left to send in two runs and tie the game, and Yunel Escobar hit a slow roller down the third-base line that Chapman had briefly but lost; another run coming in on the infield hit. Mike Trout followed with an RBI single.

Chapman, who went to El Toro High School in nearby Lake Forest and to Cal State Fullerton, rocketed a three-run homer over the bullpens in left in the second, and he doubled and scored in the sixth.

“It was a great feeling to do something like that in front of all my friends and family, going to high school 20 minutes from here and college 10 minutes down the road,” said Chapman, who had several hundred supporters on hand. “I was a little nervous, but that was a good way to kick it off.”

Handed a lead via Chapman’s blast, Oakland starter Jharel Cotton couldn’t come up with a shutdown inning, but his defense didn’t help much either. An error by center fielder Jaycob Brugman allowed a runner to advance from first to third, setting up a sacrifice fly by Ben Revere, and then Chapman failed to come up with Escobar’s two-out roller to third — yes, that happened twice Friday — as Andrelton Simmons sprinted home.

“Those are both plays I expect myself to make,” Chapman said of the rollers by Escobar that he couldn’t come up with. “It’s never a good feeling when you miss a play you think you should make and it ends up costing some runs and you lose a tight ballgame. So that’s something that’s not going to sit very well with me.”

Cotton went five-plus innings Friday, allowing seven hits and four runs, three earned. Two of those runs came after Cotton exited in the sixth, on Cliff Pennington’s two-out single off Liam Hendriks on a first-pitch fastball.

The Angels proceeded to load the bases — Hendriks gave up a single by Escobar and Ryan Dull walked Mike Trout — but Dull got Albert Pujols to hit a foul pop-up that Chapman caught with a long run down the third-base line.

All of Oakland’s runs on Chapman’s homer were unearned, thanks to Escobar’s wild throw past second on a grounder by Ryon Healy; baserunner Yonder Alonso was safe on the play, and after Bruce Maxwell struck out, Chapman hit a 2-2 changeup from Troy Scribner out to left. Scribner, making his first bigleague start, is the younger brother of ex-A’s reliever Evan Scribner.