Cahill again hit hard by longball
Angels’ sixth straight loss comes on same night Pujols tops Ruth on Elias RBI list.
Angels starter gives up three more home runs in a 6-5 loss to Mariners. Angels have lost six straight.
There was a time not long ago when Angels starting pitcher Trevor Cahill was thought of as groundball specialist. His 54.9% career groundball rate entering Saturday’s game against the Seattle Mariners was the fourth-highest among active starting pitchers.
On the flip side, he ranked 31st among the same pitchers with a home-runsper-nine-innings rate of 0.9, according to Fangraphs.
The calendar hasn’t even flipped to April, so it would be premature to strip Cahill of that title after only five starts in an Angels uniform.
But Cahill has not resembled that pitcher most of the season, and his struggles were magnified as the Angels lost a sixth straight game Saturday night. Even after Albert Pujols sent his third homer of the season over the left-center field wall for a ninth-inning homer, the Angels lost to the Mariners 6-5 at Angel Stadium.
Pujols shot put him in sole possession of fifth place on the all-time RBI list, ahead of Babe Ruth, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Pujols passed Ruth only according to baseball’s official starting point for the mark. RBIs weren’t an official statistic until 1920, and Ruth’s career began in 1914 with the Boston Red Sox.
In the first, the Mariners’ Mitch Haniger lofted Cahill’s sinker down the leftfield line for a leadoff homer. Two batters later, Daniel Vogelbach homered.
Cahill limited damage through the fourth inning to a two-run single by Dee Gordon. But after manager Brad Ausmus allowed him to return to the mound for the fifth — despite throwing 83 pitches in four innings — Cahill gave up a homer to Edwin Encarnacion.
Cahill gave up eight home runs in 121 innings last season with the Oakland Athletics. He matched that mark in his first 261⁄3 innings of his 2019 campaign.
“The home runs have been across the board, not just with Trevor,” Ausmus said. “It’s been an issue across the board and something we need to address.”
Perhaps if Cahill had been a little more effective, the Angels’ offense might have had a fighting chance.
Mariners starter Yusei Kikuchi, an alumnus of the same high school that Angels’ two-way player Shohei Ohtani attended in Japan, gave up a season-high 10 hits in five innings. Only three of the hits scored runs.
Pujols roped a third-inning double to score Andrelton Simmons. In the fifth, Simmons scored on Jonathan Lucroy’s RBI single to right field. Two batters later, Brian Goodwin shot a groundball down the first base line for a two-out triple. Kevan Smith scored from first, cutting the Mariners’ lead to 5-4.
“The reality is, you have so many guys who have been in this situation before,” Pujols said. “It’s not like you have a bunch of young kids here. I think you have a mix of veteran guys. It’s been rough. But I think the best thing is to let it happen right now rather than later on in the season, when you don’t have time to make up or catch up on that ground. … Unfortunately we’ve hit a couple of bad stretches here early in the year. But it’s still so early. I think the main thing is to stay focused and know that, when things click, we’re going to be where we want to be.”