ANAHEIM — Mike Trout is finding other ways to contribute during his home run drought.
Trout drove in the first and last runs of the day for the Angels in their 4-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday afternoon.
His two-out single in the third put the Angels on the scoreboard. In the eighth, he snapped a tie with a sacrifice fly. Bryce Teodosio, who led off the inning with a triple, came home to score.
The Angels (69-77) came back to win the series against the Twins after losing the first game in ugly fashion. It was the first time since their first home series of the season against the Cleveland Guardians that the Angels won a series after losing the opener.
The negative on the day was left-hander Reid Detmers leaving the game with an injury in the eighth inning. Detmers said his arm just felt “dead,” but there was no pain. He said he felt something was wrong in the outside part of his elbow. He is expecting to undergo an MRI exam on Thursday.
“I wouldn’t say I’m too concerned,” Detmers said. “Obviously, there’s a little little bit of ‘What’s going on?’ But nothing hurts. I’m not in pain or anything so I guess we’ll see.”
As for Trout, it was his second consecutive productive game. He reached base three times and scored each time in a blowout victory on Tuesday night.
It’s now been 28 games since Trout last hit a home run, which is the longest streak of his career. The three-time American League MVP has come to the plate 121 times since hitting career homer No. 398 on Aug. 6.
“I was thinking about (the drought) for a little bit in the beginning,” Trout said, “but now I’m just trying to put good swings on the ball. I know it’s going to come. I’m not trying to go up there and and try to hit home run. My whole career is just putting good swings on balls and they’ve gone over the fence.”
For much of that time, Trout was in a slump. Lately, though, Trout has shown some encouraging signs. He has nine hits in his last 30 at-bats, with eight walks.
Trout said he believes the problem is that something in his swing was causing him to have an uppercut, so he’s changed his hand position and feels like he’s now swinging more level.
“When the sequence is good, my swing is there,” Trout said. “I feel like my old self. When it’s not, you guys see, I swing up, swing through the fastball up. I’ve been been grinding through it. I’ve been fighting it for a while now. Even last year, same thing. And the year before that. I would do certain things. Be good for a few days or something. And then it would just go away, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Now I’ve been getting to a good spot where I’m not turning in. I’m seeing the ball.”
Trout’s third-inning single also came on a 99 mph fastball, the second-fastest pitch he’s gotten a hit against this season.
After Trout’s single, he scored on Zach Neto’s 26th homer of the season, giving the Angels a 3-1 lead.
The Angels started right-hander José Ureña instead of José Soriano, because they wanted to give all the starters an extra day this late in the season.
Ureña, who is pitching for his fifth team this season, made his first start for the Angels.
Ureña gave up only one run in four innings, even though he gave up four hits, walked four and hit a batter. He escaped bases-loaded jams in the third and fourth innings, before the Angels pulled the plug and got him out of the game with a 3-1 lead.
That lead disappeared in the sixth, when right-hander José Fermin gave up a two-run homer to Byron Buxton.
Luis Garcia, Detmers and Robert Stephenson held the Twins to maintain the tie, and then Kenley Jansen pitched a perfect ninth after the Angels took the lead. It was the 474th save of Jansen’s career, and his 27th this season.