ANAHEIM ― As a starting pitcher, Michael Lorenzen is still a work in progress.
Saturday’s game against the Washington Nationals ended in a 7-3 loss for the Angels, with Lorenzen on the losing side for the second time in five starts. For the right-hander, it counted as progress.
Six days after he threw 8 ⅓ dominant innings against the Chicago White Sox ― the longest outing of his career ― Lorenzen allowed five runs in 4 ⅔ innings. He was not as efficient, throwing 89 pitches, and not as accurate, firing 59 strikes. But he was no less discouraged.
“If you would’ve told me before the game that my stuff was going to look like that, I’d have said I would have a pretty good game,” Lorenzen said. “Hats off to them. It’s just baseball. That’s it. That’s why the best of the best are so impressive ― I feel like that doesn’t happen to them too much.”
Lorenzen (3-2) allowed solo home runs in each of the first two innings to Josh Bell and Yadiel Hernandez, respectively. In the fifth inning, the Fullerton native was allowed to pitch to Bell a third time and allowed a single. Maddon then pulled the right-hander with two outs in the inning.
The next batter, Nelson Cruz, greeted reliever Elvis Peguero with a two-run home run.
In a season defined by diminishing dingers, five home runs were hit Saturday. Cruz’s homer off Peguero put the game out of reach at 6-3, and left Lorenzen with an unsightly pitching line. He walked two batters and allowed five hits. The five runs he allowed lifted his earned-run average to 4.13.
But he was encouraged by his ability to bounce back from a 100-pitch effort with what he felt was “great stuff.”
“My arm felt great coming off of my longest outing in a really long time,” he said. “My stuff was there. I made good progress with my changeup; that’s the best it’s been in two years. The result’s unacceptable, but I’ve been doing this long enough to feel like I’m in in a good spot.”
Peguero allowed another run in the sixth inning before turning the game over to relievers Kyle Barraclough and Jimmy Herget, who didn’t allow a run in the final four frames.
The Angels did all their offensive damage in the fourth inning, sandwiching home runs by Jared Walsh (his fifth of the season) and Brandon Marsh (his fourth) around a walk to Max Stassi.
“We’ve just got to keep feeding off each other, just keep building,” said Marsh, who had two hits in his previous 25 at-bats through Friday.
Nationals starter Josiah Gray (4-2) allowed three runs in 5 1/3 innings, walking two batters and striking out three. The Angels got only three baserunners in the final four innings against relievers Steve Cishek, Erasmo Ramirez and Tanner Rainey. None scored.
Besides the two homers, the Angels failed to capitalize on their seven hits. They went 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position and left seven men on base before an announced crowd of 30,666 at Angel Stadium.
The rubber match of the three-game series is Sunday. The Angels (18-11) lead the Houston Astros (17-11) by half a game atop the American League West standings.
Entering the game, Lorenzen was one of just 24 pitchers who had thrown at least 20 innings this season and gotten at least half of their outs via ground balls. Saturday, he induced only three ground-ball outs among the 14 he recorded.
“He just did not have his normal patterns like we’ve seen,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said.
For Lorenzen, there was no need to rely on the sinkerball that was responsible for inducing groundouts. The rest of his pitches were working that well. His five-pitch mix was proof of concept why the Angels felt comfortable giving him a one-year, $6.75 million contract as a free agent, and converting him from a reliever into a starter.
For a night, the results just weren’t there.
“I feel great,” he said. “I really do. My changeup has been hit or miss for the last two years and I found it this week. I got a lot of swings and misses. The hitters were telling me it was (a) plus (pitch) today, too. I had good stuff, they just put some runs up on the board. Like I said, it’s baseball.”