Angels’ Joe Saunders is taking ‘baby steps’
Reporting from Seattle -- Joe Saunders had quite an act to follow when he stepped to the mound for the Angels on Saturday.
A day earlier teammate Jered Weaver had flirted with a no-hitter before settling for 7 1/3 shutout innings and the win that snapped the team’s seven-game losing streak.
But when Saunders took his turn he wasn’t looking for history. He was just trying to find himself.
And he took a step – albeit a short one -- in that direction Saturday, holding the Seattle Mariners to one earned run in 5 2/3 innings in a game the Angels won in the 10th on Hideki Matsui’s run-scoring single, 4-3.
“It’s baby steps, really,” Saunders said of his progress. “I take a lot of positives out of today’s game. I gave my team a chance to win. And that was my goal.
“We win, I win.”
Saunders was brilliant for four innings, giving up three hits and, helped by two double plays, facing just two batters over the minimum. For the next 1 2/3 innings, though, he was as jittery as a freshman on prom night, falling behind 10 of his final 11 batters while giving up three runs, just one of which was earned.
Yet given recent results, that qualifies as an improvement.
“It’s not one of my best starts,” Saunders conceded. “But when you can battle your butt off and the team can pull it out, that’s a victory in my book.”
The winningest left-hander in the American League over the last two seasons, Saunders struggled mightily in five of his first six starts this season, going 1-5 with a 7.04 earned-run average.
No pitcher in baseball has lost more often.
And just a handful of American League starters had a higher ERA.
But Saturday he shut out the Mariners through four innings – running Seattle’s scoreless streak to 22 consecutive innings – before Kevin Frandsen’s throwing error and Juan Rivera’s inability to cut off Ichiro Suzuki’s slicing two-out liner down the left-field line led to a pair of unearned runs.
Saunders’ meltdown the next inning was self-imposed, with the left-hander missing the plate with 14 of his 22 pitches, some of which didn’t come close to the strike zone. And that allowed the Mariners to tie the score when Mike Sweeney lined a 2-0 pitch into the left-center gap to score Franklin Gutierrez, who had walked. That erased a 3-0 Angels advantage built on Kendry Morales’ fourth-inning solo homer, his seventh of the season, and Torii Hunter’s two-run single with two strikes and two outs in the fifth.
Not that Saunders was alone in that department. The Angels walked nine batters Saturday, giving them 134 for the season, matching the Kansas City Royals for the most in the majors.
“I thought Joe definitively took a step forward,” Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said. “Some things got away from him. He got his pitch count up. But all in all, much better. It’s a step forward for sure.”
The final act, however, belonged to Matsui, whose recent struggles have been almost as deep, if not as long, as those of Saunders.
Hitless in 16 consecutive at-bats before singling in the fourth and batting .147 on the roadtrip, Matsui drove in his 1,500th career run in the 10th. That gave him three game-winning RBIs this season and gave the Angels a win in their first extra-inning game of the year.
For the Mariners, though, the struggles continue: Saturday’s loss was their eighth in a row, their longest losing streak in two seasons.
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