Angels place Cliff Pennington on DL, call up Jefry Marte and Gregorio Petit

For each new day the Angels encounter, there is a new injury that corresponds.

On Friday, they placed infielder Cliff Pennington on the 15-day disabled list because of a hamstring strain he aggravated Thursday during the Angels’ loss to St. Louis. Third baseman Yunel Escobar, nursing a jammed thumb, avoided the DL, but did not start Friday’s game.

To replace Pennington and add infield insurance with Escobar’s absence, the Angels called up Jefry Marte and Gregorio Petit from triple-A Salt Lake, using the roster spots opened by Pennington’s injury and reliever Javy Guerra’s designation for assignment.

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Marte started at third base Friday and hit eighth. Petit will serve as a reserve at shortstop, third and second base. Both players, signed as minor league free agents during the off-season, arrived less than two hours before game time at Safeco Field.

Manager Mike Scioscia said Pennington had felt the strain for a week. With starting shortstop Andrelton Simmons on the disabled list, he played through it. After Thursday, the Angels decided Pennington was at risk of suffering further damage if he continued to do so.

Pennington became the seventh Angel currently on the disabled list — and the seventh to be added since the season started. Asked whether he could recall a run of poor luck like that in his 17 seasons, Scioscia sidestepped the question.

“I don’t look back too much and go over things,” he said. “What we’re running into now is, we have some guys banged up, and we have to deal with it. You keep playing baseball. We have to keep going.”

Short hops

With Escobar out of the lineup, Scioscia moved up the top half of his order, batting Kole Calhoun first, Mike Trout second, and so on. He said he expected it to be only a “one-day thing.” … If the Angels had tied Thursday’s game in the bottom of the ninth inning, they would have played outfielder Shane Robinson at second base and second baseman Johnny Giavotella at shortstop in the 10th, Scioscia said. Catcher Geovany Soto was already playing third base because of Escobar’s injury. …The Angels signed former major league reliever David Carpenter to a minor league deal and assigned him to triple-A Salt Lake. He will be the second right-handed reliever with the same name to be part of the Angels’ organization in recent seasons. They employed another David Carpenter from 2009 to 2014. This Carpenter, 30, has a 3.66 earned-run average over 218 major league appearances, all in relief.

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