Mike Trout prevents a grand slam but Angels still fall to Mariners, 3-1

Mike Trout turned around at the boom of the bat and did not look back. At no point did he break into an all-out sprint. He only jogged — calmly, continually — until he reached one of the furthest points within play at Safeco Field.

There, he leaped, extended his glove over the wall, grabbed the baseball he desired, and fell to the dirt. He jumped back to his feet and threw to the infield having turned a certain grand slam into a sacrifice fly. Trout spent his 25th birthday chasing fast-paced fly balls and darting James Paxton pitches, but the play was the most wondrous moment, as one of the best catches of his six-year career.

“I thought at first he was going to catch it, because I saw him slowing down on the track, but then I saw him jump, and I was just praying to God, ‘Please catch that,’” said Matt Shoemaker, the Angels right-hander who served up the drive. “And then I saw it didn’t drop behind his glove, so I was quite ecstatic at that point.”

Two years ago, Paxton, a towering Canadian left-hander, once struck out Trout three times in the same game. Sunday, it was four, first on a curveball in the dirt, then on a cutter at the corner, then on a 98-mph fastball, and again swinging on a buried curveball after Trout took two fastballs clocked at 100 and 99 mph.

“I can’t figure his stuff out,” Trout said. “I don’t know. It was just one of those days. He was throwing 100.”

Trout changed his stance some last month, opening the angle formed between his left and right legs. It appeared to work well Friday and Saturday, when he sent off three-run home runs in each first inning, but there were signs he was struggling. He struck out in three consecutive at-bats after Friday’s home run, still bothered by a cold that kept him from playing Thursday.

Both starters carried perfect games into Sunday’s third inning. Then, with one out in the top of the inning, Shane Robinson reached on an error, and Kole Calhoun thwacked a single to center. After Trout’s first strikeout, Albert Pujols singled through to left for the game’s first run, and the Angels’ only one. Shoemaker began the bottom of the inning by hitting Mike Zunino with a fastball. Mike Freeman followed with his first major league hit, and so Shoemaker worked out of his first jam of the day.

He began the fourth by yielding consecutive singles, putting runners on the corners without an out for Nelson Cruz, who laced another single to right field, tying the game. Shoemaker then nailed Adam Lind in the right thigh with a 93-mph fastball.

Pitching coach Charles Nagy visited the mound before Leonys Martin could move from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box.

Shoemaker’s first pitch to him was a splitter down the middle, maybe a bit low, and Martin hammered it 394 feet. Trout performed his magic, but the sacrifice fly produced the game’s winning run, and Freeman followed it with an additional run-scoring single.

Paxton cruised through the Angels’ lineup like an ace, securing Seattle the series sweep. He even attempted to complete the game, but, with one out in the ninth, Andrelton Simmons drilled a liner back up the middle, right into Paxton’s left elbow. Paxton exited immediately in apparent pain, although initial tests showed no fracture. The Mariners pronounced him day to day.

Shoemaker finished seven innings without allowing further damage, for his latest in a string of solid but unspectacular starts. His 2016 earned-run average stands at 4.07, but his win-loss record an unsightly 6-12, because of a remarkable lack of run support.

He redirects most questions about his pitching to the idea that he is only trying to execute each pitch as best as he can. That is all he thinks about while on the mound, he says. Even when the Blue Angels flew overhead just as he set himself for a delivery in Sunday’s third inning, Shoemaker maintained that he did not let his focus wander.

“I just briefly heard it,” he said.

So when he was asked whether he had become better pitching in tight games because he has had to do it so many times this season, Shoemaker’s response was noteworthy, only insofar as it was different.

“I know what you’re asking,” he said. “You could say that, at times, but not always.”

pedro.moura@latimes.com

Twitter: @pedromoura