ANAHEIM — The Angels’ offensive malaise continued for another maddening day.
The Angels managed just two hits in a 3-0 loss to left-hander Andrew Heaney and the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday night.
Heaney, a former Angels pitcher, dominated the Angels over his six innings. He struck out nine, including the first six hitters of the game.
Heaney was throwing a perfect game until Travis d’Arnaud doubled with one out in the fifth. Nolan Schanuel then reached on an error, giving the Angels a brief glimmer of a rally.
But Luis Rengifo then hit a fly ball to center and Kyren Paris struck out.
The Angels didn’t have another baserunner until Jorge Soler’s double in the ninth inning.
It’s been a miserable offensive stretch for the Angels since they hit six homers and scored 10 runs in an April 10 victory over the Rays in Tampa, Florida. That was the pinnacle of the Angels’ first month of the season.
Since then, the Angels (11-12) have lost eight of 11 games, dropping under .500 for the first time since they were 0-1. They have averaged 2.4 runs in those games, surpassing four runs just once and getting shut out twice.
They’ve hit .186 and struck out in 33% of their plate appearances. The major league average strikeout rate is 22.4%.
While the hitters have clearly struggled, Manager Ron Washington has said a part of the problem is that they’ve run into good pitchers.
Heaney might not have left much of an impression on Angels fans for much of his career in Anaheim, but he came into Wednesday’s start with a 2.13 ERA in his first four starts of the season.
“Sometimes you’ve got to tip your hat to the other team,” Washington said before Tuesday’s game. “They pitched well. And of course we didn’t score any runs.”
The offensive outage has put more pressure on Angels pitchers, and on this night right-hander Jack Kochanowicz did all he could to keep the Angels close.
Kochanowicz gave up two runs in six innings, which was an improvement after he’d given up 10 runs in 9⅓ innings in his previous two starts.
It was a typical Kochanowicz game, in that he only struck out three and walked one. He induced eight groundouts, including three double plays.
There were also plenty of balls that eluded Angels fielders, accounting for eight hits.
The defense had no shot at one of them, a 463-foot homer from Oneil Cruz. Kochanowicz hung a slider and Cruz blasted it at 116.6 mph, bouncing it off the green hitter’s background beyond the trees past the center field fence.
After Kochanowicz was finished, left-hander Reid Detmers entered for his best outing of the season.
Detmers pitched two scoreless innings and struck out four, without a walk.
More to come on this story.