ANAHEIM, Calif. — Shohei Ohtani has come up empty twice in his bid for history.
Ohtani and the Angels lost, 2-0, to the Texas Rangers on Thursday night, leaving Ohtani stuck at nine victories for the season.
Babe Ruth was the last player to win 10 games as a pitcher and hit 10 home runs in the same season. Ohtani has 21 homers this season. Last season he finished with nine victories and 46 homers. A slightly larger contingent of Japanese media has been following Ohtani for his past two starts, in hopes of seeing the milestone.
Ohtani had a shot last Friday in Atlanta, but the Angels didn’t score a run for him and he gave up six runs in the seventh after pitching six scoreless innings.
On Thursday night, Ohtani struck out 11 – the sixth straight game in which he’d reached double figures – and he allowed just two runs in six innings. But the Angels again came up empty behind him.
Ohtani gave up singles to each of the first three hitters of the game, loading the bases. He then struck out Nathaniel Lowe, Adolis Garcia and Leody Tavares to escape the jam.
That inning cost Ohtani 27 pitches, which left him fighting the numbers for the rest of the night to get deep into the game.
A couple of quick innings got him back on track, and then he gave up a run in the fourth on a homer by Lowe. He followed that with three strikeouts.
Ohtani needed another 15 pitches to get through the fifth, with another run scoring, leaving him at 84. Ohtani gave up a leadoff triple in the sixth, but then he struck out Garcia and Tavares and got Kole Calhoun on a flyout, maintaining the 2-0 deficit.
Ohtani, who now has a 2.81 ERA after 17 starts, certainly pitched well enough to win, but the offensive malaise that has engulfed the Angels for two months continued.
Their most egregious failures were in the third and fifth innings. David Fletcher – in his first game after nearly three months rehabbing from hip surgery – lined a one-out double. Ohtani had the first chance to drive him in, but he grounded out. Taylor Ward then struck out.
Brandon Marsh led off the fifth with a double, but the Angels didn’t even get him to third. Magneuris Sierra and Andrew Velazquez struck out and then Fletcher popped out to the catcher.
The Angels’ offense struggled against Rangers right-hander Spencer Howard, who brought a 7.11 ERA into the game. It was his first scoreless outing in eight games this season, and three of the first seven were three innings or less.
