Offense continues to struggle as Angels narrowly avoid no-no

TORONTO -- Eight innings of searching for a hit have left the Angels searching for answers.

With both feet planted on the wrong side of history on Saturday afternoon, the Angels needed Taylor Ward to yank them out of it in the ninth inning of a 3-1 loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

Ward’s solo home run to lead off the ninth broke up Bowden Francis’ no-hitter and allowed Los Angeles to take a breath at last. But there was still a lot to ponder after the last out was made.

“I think a lot of us -- myself especially -- were in a tough spot, or just trying to grind out at-bats and get back to what we are good at,” said Logan O’Hoppe, who went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. “It's been a tough couple of weeks. It’s just hit after hit for us, you know, and it's a hard thing to navigate. I wish I had an answer for it.”

The one-hitter against Francis punctuated some tough trends for the Angels’ offense of late.

Before the ninth inning of Thursday’s series opener in Toronto, the club had gone 17 innings without scoring a run, shut out in the last game of the series against the Royals and scoreless through the first eight frames against the Blue Jays. Niko Kavadas broke that skid with a three-run homer in the ninth, and the Angels scored four in the second inning of Friday’s walk-off loss. Then they went another 13 frames without a run.

Chances came and went on Saturday long before Ward’s Statcast-projected 405-foot blast to left-center, but the Angels seemed to be caught in-between.

“I tell you, today we just couldn’t center a ball,” said manager Ron Washington. “ … And if you’re not going to center a ball and make something happen, what happened to us today [will happen]. You got to tip your cap to the kid. He almost threw a no-hitter, but I’m glad he didn’t.”

The Angels worked three walks and struck out 12 times against Francis, struggling to make hard contact until O’Hoppe’s 102.7 mph lineout in the fifth inning. Throughout the day, the Angels couldn’t capitalize on a handful of pitches left right over the plate.

As noble as it is to credit the pitcher for his accomplishment, there’s always another side to it.

“I really don’t know,” Ward said of what made Francis so tough. “You know, I thought that everything was hittable. Maybe to other guys he made better pitches. A lot of guys were talking about his split and that being on. But personally, I didn’t think it was anything special.”

Ward saw three splitters in that ninth-inning at-bat, all of which landed well outside the zone, perhaps an expected development given that Francis entered the frame at 111 pitches. He also fouled off two fastballs before finding his timing on the next one -- the sixth pitch of the at-bat -- for the homer.

“It feels great,” Ward said of getting that knock. “I have personally never been no-hit when I'm in the lineup, so that was a big relief right here, for sure.”

The homer knocked Francis out of the game, but the Angels had no better luck against closer Chad Green.

If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that Carson Fulmer delivered an outing described by Washington as “his best one.” In the rotation since July 14, Fulmer pitched six innings for the second time this season, striking out eight while allowing just two earned runs on seven hits and two walks.

Ward’s homer avoided history, but it also allowed this game to be remembered as a pitchers’ duel rather than obscuring Fulmer’s efforts.

“Whenever you take a loss as a pitcher, it feels like you didn't do your job,” said Fulmer. “But, you know, just looking at my last two or three starts, I've been working really hard on a lot of things -- especially being able to slow down and kind of control what's going on, and I think I did a really good job of that. I love going six and even more, so it's definitely a good start. But again, like with every outing, there's a lot of work to do.”

There’s work to do all around.

Throughout this road trip, Washington has mentioned time and again the importance of growing from experience, going through the “dog days.” There’s no substitute for it. Eventually, it may very well bring the answers this young team is looking for.