Growing pains: Eflin has rough 30th birthday

ANAHEIM -- Like most people, Zach Eflin's first day of his 30s was not a particularly happy one.

Eflin allowed five runs in five innings on his 30th birthday, sending the Rays to a 7-1 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Monday night at Angel Stadium. Eflin gave up nine hits, including six with exit velocities of at least 100 mph, and turned in his shortest outing of the young season.

“Missing over the middle of the plate, for the most part,” Eflin said. “I threw a lot of hittable pitches. [They] put some good ABs against me and took advantage of it.”

Eflin got hit hard out of the gate and never recovered. Anthony Rendon led off the bottom of the first inning with a hard single, Mike Trout hit an RBI triple two batters later and Taylor Ward followed with an RBI single to give the Angels a 2-0 lead just four batters into the game.

Trout added to the lead in the third inning when he demolished a solo home run off Eflin, 423 feet to center field, and the Angels piled on in the fifth. Rendon ripped a one-out single that came off the bat at 102.6 mph and Mickey Moniak followed with a 105.8 mph double. Ward drove in both of them with a flared single to right field and Miguel Sano followed with a 114.5 mph single through the right side, Eflin’s hardest-hit ball allowed of the day.

Even the final out of the inning, a line drive by Brandon Drury, was smoked at 104.8 mph.

“Just the consistency and the quality of the pitches, honestly,” Eflin said. “It wasn't necessarily my best command tonight. I left a lot of balls over the middle of the plate and they did a good job of hitting it.”

Things didn’t get much better after Eflin departed. Right-hander Jacob Waguespack surrendered five hits and two runs in three innings of relief as the Angels pounded out a season-high 14 hits.

“Their hitters came out and they had good at-bats,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “They got themselves in some good situations with guys on base and they were aggressive in the box.”

While Eflin and Waguespack struggled on the mound, the Rays lineup wasn’t much better at the plate. Angels left-hander Tyler Anderson shut them down for seven-plus scoreless innings, gave up just four hits and allowed only one Rays baserunner to advance past second base.

It was the rare ineffectual game against a left-hander for the Rays, who went an American League-best 24-11 against southpaws last year and were 2-1 against them this season.

Entering Monday’s contest, they were batting .278 (22-for-79) against lefties compared to .236 (60-for-254) against righties.

Against Anderson, they couldn’t get anything going.

“Really good fastball-changeup combination and a couple occasional cutters,” Cash said. “Seemed like we couldn't get on one pitch. Whatever pitch we were on, he was throwing the opposite. So he really kept us off balance. Really efficient and executed pitches when you look at the locations of those pitches.”

The Rays’ only run came in the ninth when Harold Ramirez scored on a double-play ball by Isaac Paredes, long after the outcome was decided.