Angels’ four-game winning streak ends with 5-4 loss to Twins

Craig Gentry slid with purpose into the dirt track encasing the left-field corner at Target Field on Friday night.

Minnesota designated hitter Byung-Ho Park had just laced a ball down the line in the eighth inning, and if the Angels outfielder could just prevent it from reaching the wall and deliver a competent throw to cutoff man Andrelton Simmons, Gentry knew his team could get the runner from first base out at the plate and keep the game tied.

But, within the slide, the ball caromed off Gentry’s right foot, he fumbled the recovery, and Trevor Plouffe scored the decisive run by about a second. It was by the slimmest of margins that the Angels lost to the Twins, 5-4, snapping both their four-game streak of success and their opponents’ nine-game streak of failure.

“There were so many intricate things that determined this,” said Mike Morin, one of the four Angels relievers who coalesced to squander a two-run seventh-inning lead.

The game ended with the Angels’ would-be tying run 90 feet away. It began as a veritable duel between the Angels’ ace, Garrett Richards, and the Twins’ soft-tossing fourth starter, Tommy Milone. Neither team had a runner reach second base safely until the fifth inning.

The Angels would have had one in the fourth, when Yunel Escobar popped up a ball to short right and two Twins collided in pursuit. But Minnesota first baseman Joe Mauer was backing the play up, and he threw Escobar out when he tried to stretch it to three bases.

Escobar drove in the first run of the game in the sixth inning by doubling in catcher Carlos Perez. The Twins quickly matched that in the bottom half of the inning, when Richards hit Eduardo Nunez in the elbow and Miguel Sano doubled him in.

Plouffe then produced what Angels Manager Mike Scioscia called an “unbelievable” at-bat. He battled back from 0-2 to foul off four pitches and doubled to center, scoring Sano.

Richards worked out of the inning but had racked up enough pitches to force his night’s conclusion. Scioscia turned to rookie left-hander Greg Mahle to begin the seventh. He struck out one Twin, walked the second, and was pulled for Morin. Morin induced a popup, and then threw Nunez a 2-2 changeup, to which the hitter attempted to check his swing. Replays showed he did not do so successfully, but first base umpire John Tumpane ruled he did.

Morin shook it off and threw a fastball. Nunez fouled it off. Morin threw his patented changeup but missed up, and Nunez pounded it into the very spot where Gentry would slide one inning later.

Out went Morin, the lead down to one run, and in came left-hander Jose Alvarez. Mauer, the all-time leader in batting average against the Angels, slapped a game-tying single into left field.

Out went Alvarez, the game now a tie, and in came Fernando Salas. He escaped the inning but immediately encountered trouble in the eighth, when Plouffe singled and Park approached with one out. The Twins went ahead, and former Angel Kevin Jepsen secured the save in the ninth inning.

“If you’re going to match up,” Scioscia said, “you’re going to have games like that.”

The Angels broke through against Milone in the seventh. Albert Pujols led off with a rare homer to right field, where he had previously hit only one home run as an Angel. C.J. Cron walked, and Kole Calhoun clobbered a changeup further to right for a two-run blast.

With runners on the corners and two outs in the eighth inning, the Twins pitched around Calhoun to bring up Simmons, who flared a fastball harmlessly to right field. With two runners on base earlier in the game, Simmons grounded into a double play, his fifth of 2016 — as many as all of the Mets, Nationals and Twins combined.

Perez led off the ninth with a walk against Jepsen and moved to second and then third on groundouts. Daniel Nava pinch-hit for Gentry, but three consecutive high fastballs from Jepsen overmatched him.

Follow Pedro Moura on Twitter: @pedromoura