Garrett Richards gets set to face hitters as Angels defeat Athletics, 2-1

For one more week, the Angels’ games will continue under a shroud of irrelevance, destined to be forgotten by the morning after they occur, if not before.

The franchise’s future is not at stake within these last games. It will be, far more, on Wednesday afternoon at Angel Stadium, when right-hander Garrett Richards will face hitters for the first time in four months. He’ll then start and pitch two innings next week in an instructional league game in Arizona. He tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in May and received a stem-cell injection as an alternative to Tommy John surgery that could enable him to pitch next season.

So far, it has worked as hoped.

Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said before his team’s 2-1 win over Oakland on Monday at Angel Stadium that he will travel to watch Richards’ second scheduled start, planned to last three innings, on Oct. 8.

“We’ll hopefully answer a lot of questions going into the off-season if he performs well,” Scioscia said.

After the session Scioscia will observe, Richards will throw four innings on Oct. 13, then cease throwing and return to Los Angeles to visit Dr. Steven Yoon, who administered the initial injection. Richards will undergo his fourth ultrasound examination. The first three, taken at intervals, demonstrated continued improvement.

“It’ll be interesting to go see what it looks like now after this,” Richards said. “If I go back in there, and he’s like, ‘Hey, this looks even better than before he came in,’ what does that say for the procedure? That you can’t control it, and you literally just get better and better as you go?

“Nobody knows what this stuff does. You can’t stop it. You can’t turn it off. Once you put it in there, you can’t say, ‘OK, it’s healed, stop.’ It could progressively just get better and better. But I feel as fresh as Day 1, spring training.”

Depending on what the exams show, Richards said, he could receive another injection and then wait the recommended 10 weeks before beginning an off-season program, around New Year’s Day.

Richards’ fastball velocity averaged 96 mph before the injury. He has said several times that he will opt for surgery if he cannot regain that rare force. Asked Monday if he knew how hard he has been throwing, Richards said he felt he could pitch in a game.

“Let’s put it that way,” he said. “Obviously there’s no point to going and pitching in a game right now, but if they needed me for some reason. … I could. If we were going to the playoffs, who knows, we might be going down a different path.”

As it is, the Angels have long since been eliminated from playoff contention. They are competing only for draft-pick positioning and their personal pride.

Longtime Angel and impending free agent Jered Weaver carried a perfect game into Monday’s fifth inning. With two outs, Danny Valencia poked a grounder to third, under Yunel Escobar’s glove, for a single. Weaver then walked Marcus Semien before inducing an inning-ending groundout from Bruce Maxwell.

He did not return to the mound for the sixth, despite throwing only 71 pitches. As Weaver was treated for what the Angels described as lower-back tightness, Deolis Guerra replaced him and soon yielded a tying home run to Stephen Vogt.

Weaver said his back began to bother him in the fourth inning. He plans to make his final start of the season as scheduled Sunday, but said cryptically that will meet with reporters before then to discuss his future.

“I haven’t really thought about next season, to tell you the truth,” he then said. “I’ve just been focused on getting through this one.”

In the spring, Weaver said he was unsure if he would pitch in 2017 and beyond, his decision dependent on how he performed. His results have not been great, but he has endured, and he has said he’s had fun. If he does choose to pitch next season, it won’t necessarily be as an Angel, and, perhaps for that reason, Weaver said, he felt unusually emotional before Monday’s game. He sought out workers to greet as he walked down the tunnel to the field.

“It’s a weird feeling,” Weaver said. “I’ve been here for 11 years and it’s all I’ve known and it’s different, for sure.”

In the fourth inning, Mike Trout launched a 436-foot homer for the Angels’ first run. In the sixth, he worked his career-high 111th walk of the season. In the eighth, the Athletics intentionally walked him to load the bases for Albert Pujols, who dribbled a baseball down the line. The winning run scored when pitcher Ryan Dull could not field it cleanly to throw home.

Short hops

Left-hander Tyler Skaggs, scratched from his start earlier this month because of a strain in his left forearm, will throw a 40-pitch bullpen session Tuesday. If no pain is detected, he said, he and the team will discuss the possibility of him pitching in Sunday’s season finale. … Escobar did not play Sunday while grieving the death of Cuban countryman Jose Fernandez, but played Monday with Fernandez’s initials and number written on his eye black.

pedro.moura@latimes.com

Twitter: @pedromoura