ANAHEIM, Calif. _ For one inning, Tuesday's series opener between the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Nationals was exactly what it had been hyped to be: Bryce Harper vs. Mike Trout, a young superstar showcase. For the next eight, it was a baseball game, played by 27 men and won by the more talented team.
Harper and Trout traded homers to begin before the Nationals' thorough offensive attack took over in a 4-3 victory at Angel Stadium.
Even discounting Harper, who nearly hit for the cycle, Washington doubled the Angels' hit total. Four Nationals logged multi-hit games, which no Angel managed. It began when Harper powered a fastball from Jesse Chavez out to left-center in the first inning. Trout jumped to watch the baseball leave the field but could not come close to catching it.
Trout then matched Harper in the bottom of the first with a 448-foot homer to a similar spot. Earlier in the inning, Cameron Maybin suffered a right knee sprain while attempting to steal second base. After singling and taking off, he pulled up short of the base, slid awkwardly and immediately called for a team trainer. After testing, he was helped off of the field, and the safe call on his attempted steal was reversed.
An hour later, the Angels pulled Shane Robinson from their triple-A affiliate's game. Wednesday, he'll take over on the active roster for Maybin, who will be put on the 10-day disabled list with a Grade 1 sprain of the medial collateral ligament in his knee.
"It could be a lot worse than it is with Cam," manager Mike Scioscia said. "We're grateful that it's just a sprain."
Come the second inning, Chavez gave up singles to Anthony Rendon and Matt Wieters around strikeouts of Daniel Murphy and Adam Lind. He then induced a flyout from Chris Heisey. Chavez scattered three singles over the next four innings and entered the seventh having thrown only 73 pitches.
His 75th was a 90-mph fastball on the inside part of the plate. Rendon uppercutted it beyond both bullpens for a score-tying solo shot. Six pitches later, Lind shot a single into right and Scioscia came for Chavez. Blake Parker entered the game, issued a walk, induced a flyout and struck out two Nationals to escape the jam.
Cam Bedrosian jogged in from the bullpen for the eighth. Immediately, he surrendered a triple to Harper and a run-scoring single to Ryan Zimmerman. In the ninth, rookie right-hander Keynan Middleton hung a slider to Lind, who pounded it for a home run.
After Trout's homer, the Angels' next hit came in the sixth, after Washington starter Edwin Jackson had retired 13 consecutive Angels. To begin the inning, Martin Maldonado aimed a homer just inside the left-field foul pole.
The chances amplified from there: Trout had a likely single stolen from him by center fielder Brian Goodwin to begin the bottom of the seventh inning. Harper jumped at the right-field wall to prevent a likely Albert Pujols double.
Then Washington sent in newly acquired right-hander Ryan Madson for the bottom of the eighth. He handled it with ease. Four years ago, the Angels brought in Madson and fellow Nationals reliever Joe Blanton to stabilize a shaky pitching staff. Madson never pitched and Blanton was the sport's worst pitcher. Several teams later, they are back in Anaheim.
Sean Doolittle, the other new National, recorded a rocky save in the ninth, after a double and a walk and a run-scoring groundout from Trout. Again, the Angels could not convoke the necessary hit to win the game or send it to extra innings. Their offense has repeatedly come up short this season, and even since Trout's return last week.
"This is not what we expected from our offense," Scioscia said before the game. "We're woefully shy on pressuring teams the way we need to."
He cited his club's baserunning as the one area where they were applying pressure.
"Just getting Mike back is not the sugar pill that fixes everything," he said. "We need the guys we've been talking about to start to get into their game and to have those good at-bats, to have the walk if it's there, to knock the guy in from second base with a base hit. These are all things that have been lacking."
And still lacking.
