It’s the dog days
The Angels suffer a fourth straight defeat and finish August with AL-worst 19 losses.
The Angels’ loss in Oakland leaves them with a league-worst 19 defeats in August.
OAKLAND — No team in baseball will be happier to see the calendar flip from August to September than the Angels.
With Monday’s 11-5 loss to the Oakland Athletics, the Angels finished the month with an American Leagueworst 19 losses and a major league-low 86 runs scored. It was the team’s worst month since August of 1999 — and the worst month in the Mike Scioscia era.
But if that’s the bad news, here’s the good: there’s another month left in the season. And if the Angels can turn the page quickly, they still have a chance to salvage a spot in the postseason.
Because while that 1999 team finished 24 games back in the wild-card standings, this year’s team enters September with a losing record yet trailing the Texas Rangers by just 31⁄2 games in the race the final playoff berth. And the Angels play the Rangers seven times in the next 41⁄2 weeks.
That won’t mean anything if the Angels don’t play a lot better than they did Monday, when Hector Santiago lost all sense of the strike zone while extending his personal winless streak to eight starts.
As a team the Angels have lost four straight, nine of their last 11 and 17 of 20 on the road, dropping below .500 (65-66) for the first time since June 10 and falling a season-high 71⁄2 games behind the Houston Astros in the AL West.
Thirty-six days ago the Angels led the division.
With Erick Aybar driving in two runs with a single and a sacrifice fly and C.J. Cron adding another by swiping home as part of a double steal, Santiago took the mound in the bottom of the third with a 3-0 lead. But he promptly gave that back — and then some — missing the strike zone on 15 of his last 19 pitches.
Danny Valencia and Jake Smolinski hit two of the ones that found the plate for bases-loaded doubles, giving the Athletics a 5-3 lead and chasing Santiago after just 22⁄3 innings, his shortest outing of the season.
Santiago, who was an AllStar a month ago, went 0-4 with a 6.21 ERA in six starts during the Angels’ August slide. Along the way he set career highs for both starts (26) and innings pitched (1521⁄3), something Scioscia admitted concerned him even before the game.
“There’s all kinds of things you have to be concerned with, especially with young pitchers, getting from that 140- to 150-inning season,” he said.
“We’re in uncharted waters with some guys. And we’re really not going to know until the season’s done whether it’s just a couple of outings or did he hit a wall.”
After Santiago left, Valencia doubled home another run off reliever Fernando Salas in the fifth before Mark Canha put the game away with a three-run homer off Jose Alvarez in the sixth. Oakland added two more runs in the eighth, marking the seventh time in 11 games Angels pitchers have given up at least eight runs.
Up next
Right-hander Matt Shoemaker (6-9, 4.48 ERA) will oppose Oakland righthander Cody Martin (2-3, 5.40 for Atlanta) at O.co Coliseum on Tuesday at 7 p.m. TV: FS West Radio: 830, 1330.