ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Angels can do nothing right in the late innings these days.
The Angels blew a late lead — two of them, actually — for the third game in a row, losing a grueling 11-10 game to the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday afternoon.
The Angels were swept in the four-game series against Toronto, running their overall losing streak to five games. Although plenty has gone wrong lately, their biggest issue is a failure to close out games with a lead.
After trailing by four runs in the third inning, the Angels rallied on the strength of Shohei Ohtani’s second homer of the game, and a two-run Taylor Ward homer to take a 9-6 lead by the sixth.
Oliver Ortega and Ryan Tepera gave up three runs in the seventh, an inning in which they walked three.
Just after Max Stassi hit a homer to give the Angels a 10-9 lead in the bottom of the inning, Tepera and José Quijada turned that lead into a deficit.
Tepera gave up a game-tying homer to Bo Bichette. Quijada, in his first game off the injured list, gave up another run on a pair of doubles, including an opposite field grounder from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. with two outs.
The Angels came up empty in the eighth and ninth, dropping another agonizing game.
On Friday night, the Angels had a 3-2 lead in the seventh and they lost, with the winning run scoring on an error in the ninth. On Saturday, the Angels also blew a pair of one-run leads. They had a 2-1 lead going to the seventh and then a 4-3 lead going to the eighth.
By the time the 4-hour, 13-minute game ended, the disappointing performance for Angels starter Patrick Sandoval seemed a distant memory.
Sandoval had been arguably the Angels’ best starter throughout the first two months of the season, but he was charged with six runs, five earned, in just three innings.
He actually seemed to have good stuff — his velocity was higher than normal and the Blue Jays were swinging and missing at his slider — but he couldn’t throw strikes.
He walked three hitters in a row during the four-run third inning for the Blue Jays, including one with the bases loaded. He also gave up several hits on well-placed soft contact, and he was victimized by a rare error by slick fielding shortstop Andrew Velazquez.
The combination of bad luck and bad command sent him to an early exit, trailing 6-2.
Right-hander Jaime Barria settled the game with by picking up seven outs without allowing a run, and the hitters then took Sandoval off the hook.
Ohtani, who had homered in the first, blasted a two-run homer in the third to cut the deficit to 6-4. Ohtani has 11 homers this season, including two multi-homer games.
Stassi drilled a two-run double into left center to tie the game later in the third.
Ward blasted a two-run homer in the fourth to give the Angels an 8-6 lead. Ward, who added an RBI double in the sixth, started in the outfield for the first time since suffering a shoulder injury last Friday. Since then he had been limited to pinch-hitting and one game at DH.
