ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Angels found a creative new way to lose.
The Angels hit seven solo home runs in an 8-7 loss to the Oakland A’s on Thursday afternoon.
It equaled the Angels’ record for homers in a game, and it equaled the major league record for homers in a loss. They equaled the major league record with seven solo homers, and became the first team ever to hit seven solo homers with no other runs.
Shohei Ohtani hit two homers, in the first and seventh innings, giving him his fifth multi-homer game of the season and 24 total this year. In between, Kurt Suzuki, Taylor Ward, Jo Adell and Jared Walsh went deep. Walsh’s homer was his first since June 21. Mickey Moniak, who was just acquired this week, hit his first homer with his new team in the ninth, giving the Angels their seventh blast of the day.
Ohtani came to the plate with a runner on and two outs in the ninth, but he popped out to end it. It all amounted to a strange loss because the Angels’ pitching was not good enough.
Right-hander Janson Junk gave up six runs in the third inning after starting the game by facing the minimum six hitters in the first two innings.
Junk had worked five scoreless innings in his previous start, but that all came crashing down quickly on Thursday afternoon.
After a single and a groundout to start the inning, Junk walked two straight hitters, then he gave up two straight two-run doubles and a two-run homer.
Junk’s specialty pitch is his slider, which he leaves up in the zone because it has sharp horizontal movement without the normal vertical drop. However, he gave up both doubles — to Ramon Laureano and Sean Murphy — on sliders that hung at the top of the zone.
He hung a curveball over the middle of the plate that Seth Brown drilled over the right-field fence, completing the six-run inning and ending Junk’s day.
Touki Toussaint followed him to the mound and gave up a two-run homer to Laureano in the fourth, putting the Angels down, 8-3.
After that, though, Toussaint hung around to pitch 4 1/3 innings with no other runs scoring. He threw 85 pitches and induced 13 whiffs.
