Angels’ defense sparkles, but offense is flat in 3-0 loss to Blue Jays
Peter Bourjos, the new whiz kid in center field, showed why he can be a game-changer Friday night, turning Angel Stadium into a backdrop for his own highlight reel, and Scott Kazmir took another step forward in his recovery from a shoulder injury.
If this were April, May or even June, these would be significant developments for the Angels, reasons to be optimistic about the future.
But in mid-August, with the Angels scrambling to get back into contention in the American League West, they were mere footnotes in a 3-0 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays that further muddled the Angels’ outlook.
Toronto left-hander Marc Rzepczynski, a former Anaheim Servite High School standout, gave up two hits in seven innings, struck out six, walked none and induced 12 groundball outs as the Blue Jays ended the Angels’ three-game win streak.
The Angels are not yet in sprint-to-the-finish mode, but there are only 45 games left and time is running out. They lost another game in the standings and are 8½ games behind the Texas Rangers, who beat Boston with an 11th-inning walk-off homer Friday night.
“Stuff gets magnified as you move toward the pennant race, but our challenge is not going to change because of the dwindling number of games on the schedule,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We didn’t play well tonight.
“We didn’t have good looks in the batter’s box, and we tried to hit the pitcher’s pitch too much. We just didn’t make any adjustments at the plate. We didn’t mount anything on offense.”
They did on defense.
Bourjos, the speedy 23-year-old who was called up from triple A on Aug. 3, almost made a spectacular catch in the second inning, racing to the gap in right-center and leaping at the wall for Adam Lind’s drive, which caromed off Bourjos’ left forearm for a triple. Lind scored on Edwin Encarnacion’s single for a 1-0 lead.
In the fourth, Bourjos sprinted into shallow left-center to make a diving catch of Aaron Hill’s sacrifice fly, which made it 2-0.
In the fifth, Bourjos, playing shallow against light-hitting Yunel Escobar, got an excellent jump on Escobar’s liner to deep center and made an over-the-shoulder, running catch at the warning track.
And then in the ninth, with a runner on first and two out, Bourjos raced to the gap in left-center and made a diving catch of Jose Bautista’s laser near the warning track to save a run.
“Wow, he’s the man,” said Torii Hunter, the nine-time Gold Glove Award winner who moved from center field to right to accommodate Bourjos. “That dude covers some ground. It was pretty impressive.
“That last one ... I didn’t think he’d get to it. I was shocked.”
Kazmir further distanced himself from his five-inning, 13-run, 11-hit debacle in Oakland on July 10, giving up two runs and four hits in six innings and keeping a team that leads the major leagues with 179 home runs in the park. In two starts since missing almost a month because of shoulder fatigue, he has given up two earned runs and seven hits in 11 innings.
“He had good stuff and pitched deeper into the game, which is encouraging,” Scioscia said. “He definitely gave us a chance to win. That’s a powerful lineup, and he did a good job containing them.
“Hopefully, he can follow this up with another good outing. We just couldn’t do anything to support him offensively.”
mike.digiovanna@latimes.com
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