Inside: Cishek’s rough inning proves costly against the A’s.
OAKLAND >> For more than a month, Steve Cishek had turned into one of the Angels’ most reliable relievers. That ended in a hurry. Cishek entered in a tie game in the sixth inning and saw three decisive runs score in the Angels’ 6-4 loss to the Oakland A’s on Tuesday night.
After a rough April, Cishek had improved over the past month, posting a 1.65 ERA over his previous 17 games. Opponents had hit .158 against him in that time.
However, one issue throughout the season for Cishek, even when he was pitching well, has been walks. He’s now walked 20 hitters in 27-2/3 innings, including two that opened the floodgates on Tuesday.
Andrew Heaney had thrown 98 pitches and was pulled after allowing a leadoff single to left-handed-hitting Matt Olson to lead off the sixth inning of a 2-2 game.
With a string of righthanded hitters due and with the left-handed Heaney nearing 100 pitches, Angels manager Joe Maddon summoned Cishek, a sidearm right-hander.
He started out by walking Jed Lowrie on four pitches that weren’t close. He then walked Sean Murphy on a 3-and-2 pitch, loading the bases.
The tie-breaking run, charged to Heaney, scored on a sacrifice fly. Cishek then gave up a two-run double to Elvis Andrus, making it 5-2.
That was too much for the Angels to overcome on a night that they didn’t do much against A’s righty Frankie Montas. In seven innings against Montas, the only runs came on a Justin Upton single in the third and a David Fletcher single in the fifth.
Heaney couldn’t match Montas, or even match himself over his previous two impressive starts.
Heaney had a 1.38 ERA in winning his previous two games, which coincided with a dramatic increase in his fastball use. It had gone up from 56.5 percent in his first nine starts to 74.2 percent in the last two.
Heaney started out the game that way, with 14 fastballs in his first 17 pitches, but the deeper he went the less he threw the pitch. He threw 62.7 percent fastballs the first time through the order and then 46.3 percent the second time through.
By the time his night was over after five-plus innings, he’d thrown fastballs with 57.1 percent of his 91 pitches. He walked off the mound with the score tied, but it then got away under the watch of Cishek.
Shohei Ohtani hit his team-leading 18th homer in the eighth inning to pull the Angels within 5-3, but then Murphy got the run back with a homer in the bottom of the inning.
Jared Walsh hit a solo homer in the top of the ninth for the Angels’ final run.