Angels starter is hit hard
He gives up three home runs, all off his fastball in the zone, as Angels fall to .500.
Left-hander Andrew Heaney gives up three home runs in 7-4 loss to the Seattle Mariners.
SEATTLE 7 ANGELS 4
SEATTLE — Andrew Heaney’s favorite pitch is an elevated fastball.
On Friday, the Seattle Mariners just kept hitting them out of the yard.
In the Mariners’ 7-4 win over the Angels at T-Mobile Park, the Mariners hit three home runs against the Angels’ left-handed starter. All three times, it was a fastball up, but not out of the zone that was hammered over the wall.
“I cannot tell you he wasn’t throwing it well tonight, because I thought he was,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said of Heaney. “They hit some homers on some pitches I thought were decent pitches.”
Those were the type of fine margins that doomed the Angels (12-12) in Friday’s series opener.
Albert Pujols twice watched loud fly balls die at the track. Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon were called out on borderline strikes in back-to-back at-bats in the top of the sixth. Dylan Moore scored a key insurance run for the Mariners the next half-inning after drawing a leadoff walk and advancing around the bases on a wild pitch, stolen base and throwing error on catcher Kurt Suzuki.
Here are three observations from Friday:
Heaney chased
Heaney has always pitched with the belief that “solo homers can’t beat you,” he said Friday. “The one caveat to that would be, you can’t give up a solo homer every inning you pitch.”
The Mariners didn’t go deep every time up in Heaney’s 31⁄3 inning, four-run start. But they came close.
After the Angels had taken a two-run lead in the top of the first on a Rendon RBI double and Jared Walsh sacrifice fly, Mariners lead-off hitter Mitch Haniger immediately responded with a 434-foot home run to dead center when Heaney tried to climb the ladder with a 94-mph four-seamer.
Moore did damage on a similar pitch to lead off the second, swinging at another elevated fastball in a full count for a solo shot to left that tied the score.
Moore drove in another run with an RBI single in the third before Tom Murphy took Heaney deep in the fourth inning. Once again, Heaney tried using a high fastball for his putaway pitch in an 0-2 count.
But Murphy drove it the other way, just clearing the wall in right-center to put the Mariners in front for good.
Murphy’s homer was the one that upset Heaney the most.
“There’s no reason that should be anything near the strike zone,” he said.
Ohtani hits homer
Before the game, Maddon talked at length about the pitcher-catcher relationship between Shohei Ohtani and Kurt Suzuki — a battery the manager will try to keep intact for the time being.
“It just appears as if they’re getting somewhat on the same page,” Maddon said. “That’s not to say I would hesitate to put [Max Stassi] back there [with Ohtani]. Just as of right now, leave it alone. Suzuki, I’m telling you, the guy is totally committed to his pitcher. I love it.”
Batting as the designated hitter Friday, Ohtani went on to contribute offensively too.
After initially struggling with the changeup against Chris Flexen, Ohtani didn’t miss the off-speed pitch in the third, hitting his eighth home run of the season.
Short hops
The Angels reinstated outfielder Juan Lagares from the injured list, but then optioned him to triple A. … Maddon declined to say whether the Angels were one of the nine unnamed teams that MLB announced have met the 85% threshold for COVID-19 vaccinations among Tier I personnel.