CLEVELAND -- The Angels' recent struggles at Progressive Field can perhaps be summed up by Yoán Moncada’s at-bat in the seventh inning on Sunday.
While Moncada began the series finale on the bench due his lingering knee injury, manager Ron Washington called on Moncada to pinch-hit for Scott Kingery with the Angels in the midst of a two-out rally in their eventual 4-2 loss to the Guardians.
While Moncada was aware that he could be called on as a pinch-hitter, the first-year Angel couldn’t find his helmet in the dugout, which led to a nearly minute-long delay before he could get on the field.
In fact, he took so long that home plate umpire Ryan Blakney pointed to his wrist to let everyone in the ballpark know that he had issued an automatic strike.
Everyone except Moncada, it seemed.
"I don’t think he realized it,” manager Ron Washington said after the game.
Three pitches later, Guardians pitcher Hunter Gaddis struck Moncada out looking on a changeup. Blakney’s called third strike elicited a surprised reaction from Moncada, who turned around with a confused look on his face and held up two fingers.
Blakney pulled Moncada in for a conversion and once again pointed to his wrist to reiterate the earlier automatic strike call.
After the game, Moncada confirmed that he wasn’t aware that he had been issued an automatic strike.
Washington said that he wasn’t planning on initially using Moncada because the third baseman would need to play in the field and he is currently nursing a knee injury, but that he elected to use him after Mike Trout came off the bench to collect a pinch-hit RBI single in front of him to cut the Angels' deficit to two runs.
Moncada’s strikeout wiped away all the momentum the Angels had generated with their two-out rally earlier in the frame.
After being baffled by Guardians starter Gavin Williams for most of the afternoon, they kept the seventh inning alive thanks to an error from shortstop Gabriel Arias, followed by Williams hitting Jo Adell with a pitch.
Luis Rengifo and Trout recorded singles off Gaddis to plate the Angels’ two runs.
While Moncada has played better as of late (he entered Sunday on a 4-for-10 stretch), his mental lapse was another tough play for an Angels team that gave up outs in the field and on the bases in Saturday’s loss.
"We’ve got kids that need to learn every part of the game,” Washington said pregame.
The Angels have now dropped 26 of their past 30 games at Progressive Field and haven’t won a series at the ballpark since August 2013.
The Angels' two runs in the seventh marked the first time they were able to threaten against Williams, who carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning.
Williams’ electric start came on the same day when Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz ran into some familiar struggles.
After Kochanowicz held the Guardians’ lineup in check for the first two innings, Cleveland scored its first run against the right-hander in the third inning on a sacrifice fly from Steven Kwan that was set up by a walk to Arias and a single by Nolan Jones.
The Guardians blew things open in the next inning thanks to a leadoff home run from José Ramírez and a two-run single from Jones.
"It looked like he started overthrowing things in the fourth inning,” Washington said.
The Guardians finished the afternoon with six hits of 97+ miles per hour against Kochanowicz.
After the game, Kochanowicz said that he was “searching” all game.
“I feel like I snuck through the first two [innings],” he said.
Sunday marks the second straight Kochanowicz start that’s been undone by one inning. He held the Yankees off through three innings on Monday before allowing four runs in the fourth inning in a 5-1 Angels loss.
"It’d be easy to say [that’s because] I’m young, but I’m working through some feels,” he said. “You try to trust the same feel that you had in the last outing but sometimes it’s not there. Just working on it.”
While Sunday’s start was the third straight start in which Kochanowicz gave up four earned runs, Washington said that he still has faith that the 24-year-old will be able to turn things around.
"He’s just going to keep going out there and keep going through it, you can see sometimes his emotions can get to him,” Washington said. “He’s starting to feel it.”