Ohtani runs out of steam in loss to A’s
Star player gives up two earned runs and seven hits and goes hitless at the plate.
OAKLAND 3 ANGELS 1
Shohei Ohtani typically puts the onus of losses added to his record on the season on himself. Those losses aren’t always his to bear.
On Wednesday, he had a few undesirable pitches, which resulted in the Oakland Athletics getting two earned runs off of him (three runs total). He also left the game early because of a forearm cramp in his right arm, his throwing arm. Ohtani said after the game he still planned to DH Thursday.
“If I’m healthy enough to play, I want to be out there,” Ohtani said through interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. “It feels like I can’t really afford to miss games at this point.”
The Angels went on to lose to the A’s 3-1 at home on Wednesday, another game in which adequate run support was nowhere to be found. The Angels offense scattered six hits, overall going one for 10 with runners in scoring position and left eight men on base. In the third, they had their best chance to pull ahead, with Andrew Velazquez and Magneuris Sierra getting backto-back hits, David Fletcher getting them both to advance a base on a sacrifice bunt and Ohtani coming up to bat.
“Especially the situation with the second and third one out, it felt like if I would’ve come through in that at-bat, we could’ve won the game,” Ohtani said. “Since I didn’t, it felt like that was the biggest moment of the game.”
Ohtani pitched 52⁄3 innings of seven-hit baseball, seven-strikeout baseball with a quiet night (0 for 3) at the plate. He was pulled for a pinch hitter in the seventh inning with that cramp. It wasn’t his most dominant outing, but it was still decent. He started off with his typical command, throwing the first two innings without giving up a hit. He gave up just a single in the third, running into a hiccup in the fourth.
Ohtani had started to look as if he was running out of steam despite not yet throwing 50 pitches to that point. The fourth started with his leadoff batter, Ramon Laureano, reaching on a throwing error from third base by Luis Rengifo. Ohtani threw a wild pitch to his next batter, Sean Murphy, that went into the dirt, fast rolling away from catcher Max Stassi to the backstop, which allowed Laureano to advance to second base. That at-bat concluded with Murphy hitting a grounder that rolled just too far to the right of Fletcher and into right field, allowing Laureano to score.
He got through the fifth inning mostly unscathed, pointing out to left fielder Sierra and Rengifo — after Sierra picked up a hard hit grounder that rolled into the outfield and chucked the ball to Rengifo for the final out of the inning.
The sixth was Ohtani’s most costly. Laureano again singled and Murphy followed with a two-run home run over the left-field wall.
“If you asked him, he’s probably gonna say he wants one pitch back,” interim manager Phil Nevin said.