Chavez gets it done for Angels
Right-hander pitches six strong innings to beat Blue Jays, days after losing to them in relief.
As Friday night morphed into Saturday morning, Angels righthander Jesse Chavez jogged from the dugout to the bullpen at Angel Stadium to warm up.
After exhausting its standard configuration of relievers, his team needed him late in an extra-innings loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Angels needed him again Monday, this time to start against the Blue Jays, who last year deemed him unfit to start a single game.
Motivated to redeem himself after giving up a three-run home run to Jose Bautista three nights earlier, he held them down for six innings in a 2-1 Angels victory.
“The couple mistakes I made the other night that let that inning elongate, I put them in the memory bank and reminded myself to not let that happen again,” Chavez said. “Tonight, my mentality was, anytime I get an out, there’s always another one.”
He got 18 outs, struck out seven, walked four and fired 101 pitches, his most since Aug. 19, 2015.
“It’s obviously a weird situation to come in and pitch against a team in the 13th inning, like he did, and then come in and start against them a couple days later,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “But that’s where we are.”
Where they are is in survival mode while the foundation of their projected pitching staff recovers from injury. The four men who pitched for them Monday were Chavez, Yusmeiro Petit, David Hernandez and Bud Norris. All veterans, they were acquired, in order, in November, in January, in February and on Monday.
Exemplars of the organization’s player-development process, they are not. But they helped secure the Angels’ ninth victory in 21 games and a series split.
Chavez likes to sit silently in the dugout before his starts, his head shrouded in a hood, and observe his teammates go through infield drills and batting practice.
“I just like to watch them work,” he says.
The 33-year-old believes it offers him perspective about how to handle pressure-packed situations later in the evening. His fellow players deserve his best effort. On Monday night, at least, he continuously pitched out of trouble.
Chavez worked through two first-inning walks, aided by catcher Martin Maldonado’s throwing out Kevin Pillar trying to steal second. He allowed baserunners in every inning but survived unscathed until the fourth, when Russell Martin clobbered a fastball over the wall in left-center field.
The Angels responded in the bottom half of the inning, when Mike Trout knocked a pitch down the right-field line and Bautista mishandled the ball, turning a likely double into a triple. Albert Pujols then singled Trout home.
In the fifth, Scioscia orchestrated the manufacturing of the winning run.
Cameron Maybin singled, Danny Espinosa walked, Maldonado laid down a sacrifice bunt and Maybin, with a tricky slide, scored on a sharp grounder to second base by Yunel Escobar.
In the sixth, the Angels loaded the bases with one out but netted no runs.
To conclude Toronto’s half of the sixth, Martin was called out on strikes on a pitch that did not cross the plate. He complained to homeplate umpire Toby Basner. In the middle of the inning, Basner ejected Jays manager John Gibbons for shouting something from the dugout.
Overall, Basner’s performance confounded. Television replays showed his strike zone included pitches that definitively did not catch any part of the plate. He repeatedly angered both teams.
In the late innings, “Let’s go Blue Jays” chants drowned out Angels-centric cheering. Few fans remained. The Angels announced a crowd of just 25,304, their least-attended game since April 23, 2015.
Norris handled the ninth inning for his second career save. After the first two batters reached base, he notched a strikeout and induced a game-ending double play.
“That's the style we need,” Scioscia said. “We did a pretty good job of that this series.”