SEATTLE — The Angels’ losing streak continued with a particularly awful afternoon.
The Angels’ 9-3 loss to the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday afternoon was decided when they allowed six runs in the seventh inning.
Even before all that, the Angels saw Mike Trout leave the game.
The Angels’ oft-injured superstar was pulled for a pinch-hitter in the top of the fourth inning. Manager Ron Washington said after the game that Trout felt soreness in his left knee when his foot hit first base while running out a ground out in the third inning and they removed him as a precaution.
“When it happened, I knew it was like a weird feeling, but now after getting treatment and stuff, it actually feels a little better,” Trout said. “Hopefully it just was little scar tissue breaking up, or a little jammed.”
Trout, who had two surgeries on his left knee last year, said he might be able to play on Thursday.
“We’ll come in and see how it feels,” Trout said. “So that’s the plan right now.”
Trout has started all 29 Angels games this season, matching the total he played last season.
Trout has missed most of three of the previous four seasons with injuries, playing just 41% of the Angels’ games in those years. The Angels moved him from center field to right field this season in an effort to help keep his legs fresher throughout the season.
Trout singled in his first at-bat. In the third inning, he hit a slow grounder to second base and sprinted down the line, lunging at the bag to try to beat the play. His sprint speed of 29.7 feet per second was his fastest time of the season.
Trout played right field in the bottom of the third, without a play. He was then removed from the game when his spot came up in the fourth.
“I was smelling an infield single,” Trout said. “I just reached for the bag and jammed it up a little bit. … I didn’t really feel it when I got back in and then when I started jogging in the outfield I started feeling it a little more. Want to be smart about it.”
Even though Trout hasn’t been as productive as usual, the Angels (12-17) desperately need him if they are going to get out of their offensive funk.
Over the last 17 games, the Angels have hit .194 and they’ve scored 2.4 runs per game. They’ve also been striking out at a high rate.
They improved somewhat on Wednesday, collecting 10 hits and striking out just four times. It was their fewest strikeouts of the season, and the first time during this 17-game stretch that they had more hits than strikeouts.
“We got a lot of hits,” Washington said. “Just didn’t put a lot of runs on the board. And throughout the game we had opportunities to keep putting runs on the board, but we just couldn’t get the hit to make it happen.”
In the top of the seventh, with the score tied 3-3, the Angels had runners at second and third with one out. Logan O’Hoppe hit a pop-up and Luis Rengifo grounded out, ending the threat.
In the bottom of the inning, the Mariners started a rally with two straight infield hits against left-hander Reid Detmers. A passed ball and then three straight clean hits gave the Mariners a 7-3 lead. They added two more on a single off the glove of first baseman Nolan Schanuel.
“We had our chance in the seventh inning,” Washington said. “We couldn’t get the ball out the infield. They had their chance in seventh inning. They put the ball in play and found holes and did what they had to do, and then we couldn’t get any outs.”
The Trout injury, the failure to make more of their offensive opportunities and the seventh-inning meltdown overshadowed another strong performance from left-hander. Tyler Anderson. He worked six innings and gave up two earned runs, on a Randy Arozarena homer in the second.
Anderson retired 12 of the last 13 hitters he faced to notch his third straight quality start. Anderson, who has a 2.67 ERA, has not allowed more than three runs in any outing this season.
His biggest out was in the second inning, when he got Julio Rodriguez on a broken-bat pop-up to end the inning with the bases loaded.
“After Arozarena got him, he started executing his pitches a lot better,” Washington said. “Just left one up to Arozarena. Other than that, he stayed out there and he battled, and he got us into the seventh inning. When we got into the seventh inning, it was a tie ball game. We just couldn’t push those runs across that we had an opportunity to push across.”