CLEVELAND_It is the moments that make a season, for good or for bad, and amid their four and one-half-hour, twice-delayed, debacle of a defeat Thursday night at Progressive Field, the Angels experienced one of their most painful moments to date.
It was the bottom of the sixth inning, the outcome long since decided, and Angels Manager Mike Scioscia hewed to it with his decision to remove his top players from the field.
Shane Robinson replaced Mike Trout in center field. Gregorio Petit replaced Kole Calhoun in right field, playing the position for the first time in his professional life. Johnny Giavotella took over at second base. And catcher Geovany Soto replaced Jefry Marte at first base, he, too, playing the position for the first time in the major leagues.
Two outs into the experiment, Indians catcher Roberto Perez popped up a ball 40 or 50 feet in the air, just behind first base. Soto moved under it, shuffled back at the last second, and could not make the catch. The ball bounced out of his glove and into Giavotella's mouth, where it drew immediate blood, before finding its way onto the dirt.
There it was _ maybe _ the nadir of this 2016 Angels' season, the injury within the insult of a 14-4 loss to the Cleveland Indians that stretched their losing streak to a season-long seven games.
With Tim Lincecum demoted to triple-A, the Angels turned to Jhoulys Chacin, who fared even worse than Lincecum had in his nine major league starts. Chacin retired four Indians and let nine of them reach base, seven runs scoring against him. Newcomer Brett Oberholtzer barely fared better in relief, yielding six runs while notching six outs.
Mike Napoli troubled his old team once again, his 4 for 4 day raising his statistics against the Angels to a .338 average, .450 on-base percentage, and .706 slugging mark in more than 200 at-bats.
For the Angels, the few positives were concentrated at the game's beginning. Punching his way out of a slump, Mike Trout punched a down-the-middle fastball from Kluber out to right field in the first inning. Cliff Pennington poked a solo shot in the third and drove in a run with a double play.
Play stopped first in the bottom of the fourth inning, for 31 minutes, and then in the middle of the seventh, for 39. Rain was in the forecast for much of the night, will be throughout the weekend while the Angels are in town. Saturday's game, in particular, appears unlikely to be played sans interruption.
With the bench emptied, Albert Pujols stayed in the game throughout, and he led off the exceptionally meaningless top half of the ninth with a vicious cut to center field. The double moved him into sole possession of seventh place in the sport's history for extra-base hits, one more than Ken Griffey Jr. and Rafael Palmeiro.
