Yankees take advantage of Ricky Nolasco, beat Angels 8-4

It was an intimidating set of circumstances. The American League leader in home runs allowed had to pitch against the most powerful team in the major leagues, at one of the stadiums most susceptible to home runs.

True to form in the Bronx, the Angels’ homer-prone right-hander Ricky Nolasco surrendered two more home runs, ascending to the major league lead, and bore another loss, 8-4, this one against the New York Yankees.

“He’s given up a lot of home runs, you can’t sugarcoat it,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “But if he was making good pitches and giving up home runs, you would start to be a little more concerned.”

Asked to clarify what he meant, Scioscia said the club would feel the need to dig deeper into the cause if Nolasco were allowing home runs on well-placed pitches.

“We all feel this is really correctable with Ricky,” Scioscia said. “When a guy’s making mistakes and getting hit and then you see him make good pitches and get outs, you have a lot of confidence that if he can find that consistency, he’s gonna have success.”

As he has searched for success, Nolasco has hampered the Angels’ attempts to remain in the wild-card race. Since April 27, he has started 10 games in six cities across America and his team has not won once.

Scioscia pointed to his league-worst run support as evidence that fact is not all Nolasco’s fault.

“There are games when he’s definitely given us chances to win,” the manager said. “So you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water as you sort this out.”

In the final month of 2016, Nolasco logged a 1.47 earned-run average over six starts, prompting raves from team officials about his sinker’s ground-ball results. But until that point in his four-year contract, Nolasco had been one of the worst pitchers in the sport. From opening day 2014 with Minnesota until Aug. 31, 2016, his ERA was 5.46 over 351 innings.

The Angels appear convinced that small sample and the distant past are more indicative of his true talent level. He is 34, and he has a career 4.55 ERA.

“We saw him look really good at the end of the year,” Scioscia said. “He’s not too far removed from that. Ricky’s been a good major league starting pitcher, and he’s not that far off from where we feel he’s going to be as productive as he was toward the end of last year. We need it, he’s working hard towards it, we have a lot of confidence that he’s going to find it.”

The first of Wednesday’s home runs, in the second inning, was a product of circumstance. Didi Gregorius took advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short right-field porch for a two-run home run. Similarly struck balls are home rs 3% of the time, according to MLB’s proprietary Statcast trove of data.

After striking out Aaron Judge looking with a darting sinker in the fifth, Nolasco pumped another fastball along the outer edge of the strike zone to Matt Holliday. He pushed it to right field for a go-ahead solo shot.

Two of three Yankeesreached base to begin the sixth, bringing Scioscia out of the visitors’ dugout and Mike Morin out of the bull-pen. Austin Romine soon doubled, and Nolasco’s line was cemented: five runs in 51/3 innings, with five walks and five strikeouts.

The walks he also attributed to circumstance.

“This is one of those parks where you can’t just sit there and challenge,” Nolasco said. “You kind of pitch to the park. I didn’t want to walk five guys, but I also didn’t want to just serve it up by challenging these guys.”

His 2017 earned-run average is an unsightly 5.23. He has served up 23 homers, tied for the major league lead with Cincinnati’s Bronson Arroyo, who this week admitted he may never pitch again. The Angels (37-38) received no hits from the first four men in their lineup, one night after those same men combined for nine. Two two-run homers by catcher Martin Maldonado supplied all of their offense.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi was desperate to stop his club’s seven-game losing streak, so the Angels faced top relievers Dellin Betances in the eighth and Aroldis Chapman in the ninth.

pedro.moura@latimes.com

Twitter: @pedromoura