Shohei Ohtani hits mammoth home run, but Angels blow early lead in 7-3 loss to Mariners
Shohei Ohtani watches his a solo home run during the third inning against the Seattle Mariners on Friday.
(Ted S. Warren / Associated Press)
José Iglesias grabbed ahold of Ippei Mizuhara. Justin Upton pulled off his hat and clutched his head. Kurt Suzuki did the same, mouth gaping from the bench at the back of the dugout behind them.
Combined, the three Angels veterans have 40 seasons and more than 4,250 games of big-league experience.
But on Friday night in Seattle, they reacted in simultaneous dumbfounded amazement, Shohei Ohtani making them witnesses again to something they’ve never before seen.
Ohtani hit his MLB-leading 33rd home run of the season in the third inning against the Seattle Mariners, an estimated 463-foot blast that became just the sixth in the 22-year history of T-Mobile Park to reach the very top tier of the upper deck.
The only problem: It was the last run the Angels would score Friday night.
Despite leading by three at the time, the Angels went on to allow seven consecutive runs and lose 7-3 to the Mariners. It was another home run, an eighth-inning grand slam by Mitch Haniger off José Quintana, that made the difference.
Angels pitcher José Quintana reacts after allowing a grand slam home run to Seattle’s Mitch Haniger, circling the bases, during the eighth inning of the Angels’ 7-3 loss Friday.
(Ted S. Warren / Associated Press)
“We had a nice thing going on,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said. “We gave them the momentum back.”
Indeed, earlier in the night, the Angels had gotten off to a strong start.
David Fletcher hit a leadoff home run in the first — it was his first home run of the season and extended his hitting streak to 22 games, longest in the big leagues this season — and Juan Lagares laced an RBI double in the second.
Then Ohtani clobbered his latest home run of historic significance. It matched him with Sammy Sosa in 1998 for the most home runs by a foreign-born player before the All-Star break. It gave him 16 home runs in his last 21 games, an American League record for any 21-game stretch, and put him on pace for 61 this season, which would match Roger Maris for most in AL history.
The at-bat against Mariners left-hander Marco Gonzales began with two strikes, too. But then Ohtani laid off a low curveball before attacking a sinker left up in the zone.
Based on the contact alone, Ohtani seemed to know it was gone, watching the ball with a slow walk out of the batter’s box and dropping his bat as it continued to sail far beyond the right-field wall.
“That ball was far,” Maddon said. “They said 463 [feet]. It can’t be 463. I know they claim that stuff is accurate, but then I’ve seen others that are rated farther than that. No way.”
Angels star Shohei Ohtani hits his 33rd home run of the season Friday against the Mariners.
Echoed Angels starter Alex Cobb: “That ball was well over 500 feet. I don’t think there’s ever been a ball put up there. … I was on the bench, jaw-dropped. Put a towel over my mouth and was like, ‘I can’t believe where that ball ended up.’”
The rest of the Angels dugout was equally stunned, their disbelief caught on camera as they craned their necks toward the sky.
Iglesias and Mizuhara, Ohtani’s interpreter, began laughing once they saw the ball land among a sea of empty seats several dozen feet above the field. With a yell, Upton turned to hitting coach Jeremy Reed when the ball finally came down, his eyes wide and one arm raised in the air.
Even for Ohtani’s prodigious power, it was that impressive. That out-of-the-ordinary. That hard to believe.
“I know we talk about Shohei all the time, but we don’t talk about him enough,” Cobb said of his two-way teammate, who is also batting .279, slugging an MLB-best .704 and has a 3.49 ERA as a pitcher. “It’s just incredible.”
The euphoria, however, wouldn’t last. Instead, the familiar set in as the Mariners (47-42) clawed their way back the rest of the night.
A Luis Rengifo error at third base with two outs in the fourth led to two unearned Mariners runs, the only blemishes on Cobb’s stat line in a 5⅓-inning start.
“With us, we have such a small margin for error, we just can’t do those things,” Maddon said. “That permitted the comeback on their part.”
The Angels (44-43) escaped a jam in the sixth, with Tony Watson coming out of the bullpen to strand two runners. But they had no such luck in the seventh or the eighth.
In the seventh, Watson issued a walk to J.P. Crawford before giving way to Steve Cishek, who promptly gave up a pair of singles to Haniger and Ty France to allow Crawford to score and tie the game.
In the eighth, Mike Mayers got in trouble, yielding a walk to Shed Long Jr. and a hard-hit infield single to Jake Bauers. From there, Maddon turned to Quintana, who was only making his fifth relief appearance since being removed from the starting rotation, and his first with the Angels not trailing in the game.
“Once I saw the hit by Bauers, I thought it was the right thing to do,” Maddon said.
Quintana, however, walked Crawford in a lefty-lefty matchup to load the bases. He then fell behind Haniger, a righty, before throwing a sinker at the bottom of the zone that Haniger drove over the wall in left-center.
Asked of Quintana’s struggles this year — he now has a 7.32 ERA — Maddon said that while the left-hander’s fastball has been good, his secondary pitches perhaps haven’t been sharp enough to get hitters to chase.
“It’s all over the map,” Maddon said. “I’d love to pin it down.”
That could be an apt description for the Angels at large, too, who once again failed to capitalize on a stunning moment from their superstar slugger in a somber loss to open their final series before the All-Star break.
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