Angels 12, Orioles 3
Brushed aside early and often
Tillman blasted for seven runs as O’s are swept out of Anaheim
The club might have reached rock bottom on its first leg of its six-game West Coast road trip, swept out of Southern California with a 12-3 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Thursday night at Angel Stadium.
The Orioles have had their share of blowout losses — eight defeats of five runs or more through the season’s first 31 games — but Thursday’s setback was their most lopsided, all but over after the second inning.
“It’s tough. It’s tough on a team,” manager Buck Showalter said of the large deficits. “We’ve had some well-pitched games, too. We just haven’t been able to put it together. We have a big offensive night when one of our starters needs to be helped. And on the other side, when we get a good start, we struggle to score runs. Our timing hasn’t been good, but tomorrow is another opportunity.”
Right-hander Chris Tillman was roughed up for seven runs, allowing eight of the 11 batters he faced to reach base as Angels hitters sprayed the outfield with hits. Tillman lasted just two batters into the second inning, his shortest start of the season as his season ERA ballooned to 9.24.
“I don’t think we pitched all that great this series,” Tillman said. “There are a lot of things that have been going wrong. We know what we are capable of and I think this is baseball. Tomorrow we could come out and play really, really well. So I don’t dwell on all the negative stuff. Just move on.”
The Orioles offense went hitless for five innings against Angels right-hander Jaime Barria, who had been recalled from Triple-A Salt Lake City earlier in the day. Making his third major league start, Barria held the Orioles to two runs on four hits over six innings.
After suffering their ninth straight road loss, the Orioles (8-23) are 15 games under .500 and will take the American League’s worst record — and the second worst in the majors — to Oakland to start a three-game series against the Athletics with a beleaguered bullpen that had to account for seven innings with four relievers.
Barria didn’t allow a hit until Trey Mancini’s leadoff single in the sixth, which fueled an inning that included four hits — all singles — with run-scoring hits by Manny Machado and Chris Davis. Machado drove in a second run with an RBI single in the eighth.
But that made just a dent into the Angels’ huge lead. On Wednesday, the Orioles cut an eight-run ninth inning deficit to three before falling to Los Angeles, 10-7. But there would be no late rally Thursday.
Tillman couldn’t build on his best outing of the season, a seven-shutout-inning start of one-hit ball that gave false hope that he had found his form. Instead, Tillman had little to offer that the Angels didn’t hit as Los Angeles batters recorded extra bases on four of the seven hits off Tillman.
“He cares so much, but nobody understands what this is all about more than Chris, and what’s at stake,” Showalter said. “I’m sure it’s real frustrating for him, as it was for us, for him to take what we hoped was a really good step last time out and then have a tough outing like tonight.”
An announced 35,879 witnessed a rout but came to Angel Stadium in hopes of witnessing history as Albert Pujols was on the cusp of reaching 3,000 hits.
Pujols hit a two-run double off Castro in the second inning to come within one of the mark. Castro hit him with a pitch in his next plate appearance, eliciting boos from the home crowd, and Pujols was hitless in his final two plate appearances.
“It’s only May 3. There is 28 more day of May, probably 24 games,” Jones said. “Hopefully we can go 20-4 the next 24 games and all of this will be behind us. The reality is we need to score more runs, we need to be more aggressive. We need to just be better.”
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