Angels come up empty on nine-game trip after another loss in Cleveland

The Angels were down a run in Sunday’s rain-delayed eighth inning at Progressive Field. Albert Pujols was facing Cleveland left-hander Andrew Miller, in Pujols’ estimation “one of the nastiest guys in the league.” With two outs, Pujols watched two balls go by and then let what he thought was a third pass inside.

Home-plate umpire Clint Fagan called it a strike, and Pujols glanced back and told him he made a terrible decision. The two forged on. With the seventh pitch of the at-bat, on a 2-2 count, Miller fired another fastball in about the same spot, a few inches closer to the strike zone.

Fagan called another strike. Pujols again told him his feelings, this time demonstratively. When Pujols was a few steps into his retreat to the dugout, Fagan ejected him, angering the Angels’ designated hitter all over again.

“He should’ve ejected me when I told him right there that that ball was down and that was terrible,” Pujols said. “I don’t freakin’ complain about strikes too much, man, but you can’t get caught up with the crowd right there, man. That’s embarrassing.”

The Angels are a pot of water left to continuously boil overnight, with nothing to cook in it in the morning. Undermanned and overwhelmed, they lost their 10th consecutive game, 5-4, to finish one of the worst road trips in franchise history.

They left Orange County after a loss on the evening of Aug. 4, a trip across the country in store, from Seattle to Chicago and on to Cleveland. Sunday night, they returned home, winless over nine games in three cities for the first time in 47 years.

“It’s frustrating,” Pujols said. “I mean, we lost 10 freakin’ games in a row. But we need to get on that plane, man, and we need to get ready to play. Nobody’s gonna feel sorry for us.”

After the fourth rain delay in as many days in Cleveland — more delays than the Angels had faced all season — Sunday’s series finale began 90 minutes later than planned. The Angels attacked Indians starter Trevor Bauer early and led, 4-1, after four innings. Center fielder Nick Buss tripled and doubled while playing for a resting Mike Trout. Catcher Geovany Soto sent a solo homer to center.

Jered Weaver worked around four singles to hold his opposition to one run, on a solo shot, until the fifth, helped by right fielder Kole Calhoun, who threw out a runner at home plate.

In the second inning, Bauer drilled Jefry Marte in the shoulder blade with a fastball. Marte stayed in the game long enough to score on Ji-Man Choi’s subsequent homer, then exited. The results of an X-ray exam were negative, the Angels announced, and he is day to day with a bruised shoulder. Soto received the same prognosis after a negative X-ray on a bruised left thumb sustained on a backswing.

With the Angels ahead by the three runs in the fifth, Weaver yielded back-to-back hits and walked Roberto Perez on four pitches to load the bases for Carlos Santana. Weaver induced a grounder, netting the Angels a force at home, and a harmless flyout to left, but Francisco Lindor followed with a two-out, run-scoring walk and Mike Napoli ground- ed a ball in the same direction from which it came.

Johnny Giavotella fielded it behind second base and tried to force out Lindor at second instead of throwing to first, in what Manager Mike Scioscia would later term a “misread” of the situation. It allowed a run to score.,

The Indians scored twice more the next inning when Weaver yielded a single to series-long tormenter Jose Ramirez and an off-the-wall double to Tyler Naquin. Scioscia removed Weaver from another middling start and asked right-hander Jose Valdez to preserve the tie in his 12th major league appearance.

He could not. Abraham Almonte lined in the go-ahead run.

“I think it’s easy to look at this game and see some positives,” Scioscia said. “And some things that went right and also where the game slipped away.”

Five times during their 10-game streak of defeats, the Angels have perished by two runs. Sunday’s was the first time they lost by just one. Only two teams have suffered losing streaks as long this season: Cincinnati and Tampa Bay, each of which lost 11 in a row.

The trip cemented what became likely long ago, that 2016 is a waste, that the Angels’ goals will not be completed. Players were more willing to admit that Sunday night than at any previous time.

“It’s no way you want to go about a season,” Weaver said. “It could be my last year here, and it’s definitely not the way I wanted to go out.”

pedro.moura@latimes.com

Twitter: @pedromoura