Angels hunt for hits with limited lineup
They’re held hitless by Twins for five innings, after bad news on Rendon, for seventh loss in eight games.
Bailey Ober learned that the best medicine is to not give up a hit for as long as possible.
Ober took a no-hitter into the sixth inning while fighting through a stomach bug, Carlos Santana homered and the Minnesota Twins won their fifth game in a row, beating the Angels 5-3.
Santana drove in two runs, while Byron Buxton, Ryan Jeffers and Willi Castro each had an RBI to help the Twins win the opener of a three-game series and a six-game trip.
Ober (2-1) was charged with two runs on three hits over 71⁄3 innings with eight strikeouts to continue his recent domination after he gave up eight runs on nine hits over 11⁄3 innings of his season debut against Kansas City. In his four starts since, Ober has a 1.47 earned-run average over 241⁄3 innings while giving up a combined 11 hits.
“You kind of relax a little bit,” Ober said Friday about having an illness that forced him to sharpen his focus. “I feel like you take pressure off yourself to perform just because you know you’re not feeling great out there and you’re not thinking about too much. You’re trying to execute pitches and that’s about it.”
Left-hander Caleb Thielbar got the final out for his first save of the season and the second of his career.
Patrick Sandoval (1-4) gave up four runs (three earned) over 52⁄3 innings for the Angels, who lost for the seventh time in eight games. Nolan Schanuel drove in a pair of runs and Zach Neto had an RBI.
The Twins took a 1-0 lead in the second inning on Santana’s home run to center field, his second. Buxton made it 2-0 with his single in the third.
With Ober in control, the Twins added a third run in the fifth inning on a Jeffers single and made it 4-0
in the sixth when Santana drove in his second run of the game on a single.
The Angels finally got their first hit when Luis Rengifo hit a blooper to shallow center field just out of the reach of Castro at shortstop. After a double from Neto put two runners aboard, Schanuel ended the shutout with a run-scoring grounder to short.
“Despite all that, we still had ourselves in position to win that game,” Angels manager Ron Washing ton said. “We just have to get our offense going earlier. It’s the second game in a row we went into the sixth with a no-hitter. But from the sixth to the ninth, we fought.”
Twins manager Rocco Baldelli has been impressed with how Ober has not only turned things around after a clunker in his opener, but
also continues to pitch at a high level, even with an illness.
“When a guy’s sick, you don’t know if he’s fine, he’s going to keel over, or something in between. You just don’t know,” Baldelli said. “We kept a close eye on him but man, he was direct. He was grabbing the ball, throwing strikes and he had the cutter working pretty good. He looked great. He didn’t look sick, that’s for sure. He pitched about as well as you can pitch.”
Schanuel added an RBI single in the eighth inning before Castro got the run back for the Twins on a double in the ninth. Neto drove in a run for the Angels in the ninth.
“We just couldn’t find a way to get on base,” Washington said. “We finally cashed in with Rengifo’s hit and then things started to fall in our favor. But we need to get our offense
going earlier.”
Former Twins infielder Miguel Sanó started at third base for the Angels and went 0 for 2 with two strikeouts. Before going unsigned and not playing last season, Sanó was in Minnesota for eight seasons and hit 162 home runs.
Rendon to miss significant time
Third baseman Anthony Rendon said he has a high-grade partial tear of his left hamstring, five days after he was placed on the injured list with a “strain.” It is expected to be a lengthy recovery for Rendon, who failed to play more than 58 games in any of his previous four seasons with the club, although one of those was the shortened 2020 pandemic season.