DETROIT — Whatever positive vibes the Angels generated during their 90-minute pregame meeting must have dissipated during the subsequent 2-hour, 45-minute rain delay.
When the tarp was pulled and the Angels returned to the field, they looked like the same team that has been limping along for weeks, doing very little right.
The Angels lost, 6-2, to the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday night, dropping their sixth straight game and 14th in the last 17.
Right-hander Johnny Cueto pitched three perfect innings, but then poor defense bit him in the fourth and he gave up three homers in the fifth and sixth.
The Angels’ hitters managed a run in the first inning, giving them a lead they held until the fourth, but they did little the rest of the night.
The Angels (54-78) have hit .196 over the last 17 games. They’ve averaged 2.7 runs per game.
“We’re just going through that period where we don’t put runs on the board,” Manager Ron Washington said before the game. “It’s tough on pitchers, because now they’ve got to be perfect. And now when the ball goes up, we’ve got to make plays, and if we don’t make a play, it really makes the inning seem like they’re killing us, and they really aren’t. When you score runs and you don’t make plays, you can sort of get away with it, but when you’re not scoring runs and you don’t make plays in certain situations, it snowballs.”
Cueto, a 38-year-old who spent most of the season in the minors, started the game with a clinic for the Angels’ young pitchers on how to finesse your way through a lineup without overpowering stuff. He retired all nine hitters on just 29 pitches.
In the fourth, the Angels’ defense abandoned him and he gave up two runs. Left fielder Taylor Ward got his glove on a ball at the warning track, but he couldn’t make the play and it went for a leadoff triple.
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Right fielder Jo Adell also misplayed a ball, allowing Matt Vierling to take third on a double. Vierling then scored when shortstop Zach Neto couldn’t make the play on a ball hit just to his left.
Neto then made a nice running catch of a pop-up to help Cueto avoid further damage.
There was nothing the Angels’ defense could do about the homers that Cueto allowed to Jake Rogers, Riley Greene or Kerry Carpenter. Cueto also walked Vierling just before Carpenter’s homer, putting the Angels down by four.
That was too big of a deficit for the Angels the way they’re hitting these days. One of their five hits was Nolan Schanuel’s dribbler in front of the plate and another was a Neto pop-up that the Tigers allowed to drop in right field.
More to come on this story.
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