ANAHEIM -- It was a challenging and downright difficult season for Andrew Heaney for many reasons -- notably the death of his best friend Tyler Skaggs -- but he ended it with a solid outing against the A’s on Wednesday.

Heaney gave up one run over 5 1/3 innings with seven strikeouts in a 3-2 loss to the A's in the series finale at Angel Stadium. Heaney finished the season with a 4.91 ERA in 95 1/3 innings, while leading the team in starts (18) and strikeouts (118).

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"It was good," Heaney said of his final outing. "I got myself into trouble, but avoided the big ball that has turned those [starts] a little bit ugly. So it's definitely not the best I could hope for, but I did what I could with what I was working with."

After leading the team with 30 starts and 180 innings in 2018, Heaney was hopeful his injury problems were behind him, but he had two stints on the injured list this year. He missed the first two months of the season with left elbow inflammation, and three weeks with left shoulder inflammation in late July. It left a void in the rotation that the Angels never could quite fill.

“The takeaway isn’t from the 18 starts, it’s that he missed so much time,” Angels manager Brad Ausmus said. “He missed a good chunk of time early. That’s an arm we could have used in our rotation.”

Heaney, though, ends his season healthy and on a high note following his strong showing against Oakland. Heaney threw 103 pitches, getting 12 swings and misses, including eight with his sinker, which he often elevated against A's hitters. But the lone run he gave up came on a high sinker, as Ramon Laureano smacked a solo shot on an 0-2 offering in the fifth.

Home runs were an issue for Heaney this season, as he served up 20 of them, including eight in five September starts. His walk rate also slightly ticked up this year, but he improved his strikeout rate by a large margin -- he fanned nine batters per nine innings in 2018 compared to 11.1 this season.

“The raw stuff is very good,” Ausmus said. “He can get swings and misses on the fastball, which isn’t extremely common. His breaking ball is coming around really nicely. He’s used the changeup really well. That’s when he’s effective. I think he believes execution and location of the pitch are the most important thing.”

Heaney said he still hasn’t properly looked back at his season to evaluate it, but plans to meet with pitching coach Doug White and bullpen coach Andrew Bailey later this week to discuss what he did well and what can be improved.

“I had some really good starts, I had some really bad ones,” Heaney said. “I think if I can shift those bad ones to mediocre ones and the mediocre ones to a little bit better, you start giving your team a chance to win, and things ultimately work out better for you."

Heaney pitched in and out of traffic all game and exited in the sixth after walking Mark Canha and allowing a one-out single to Jurickson Profar. Right-hander Luke Bard got Seth Brown to fly out and lefty Adalberto Mejía got Sean Murphy to ground out to keep the inherited runners from scoring.

Wednesday's outing ends Heaney’s fifth season with the Angels. He remains under team control for the next two years, and the Angels will be counting on him to stay healthy in 2020 -- the lefty said he plans to alter his offseason workouts with that goal in mind.

"Heaney is still to me a guy who has the stuff to be an All-Star pitcher,” Ausmus said. “I know he's had some inconsistencies at times, and he's had some health issues this year as well. But when he's healthy, he's really good. When he executes pitches, he's one of the best left-handers in the league.”