José Soriano suffers a rare off night as Angels lose 5th straight

CHICAGO — On a night when José Soriano looked human again, the hitters couldn’t bail him out.

After waking up on Tuesday with a stiff neck, Soriano gave up three runs, which was two more than he had allowed all season, and the Angels lost to the Chicago White Sox, 5-2, on Tuesday night, dropping their fifth straight game.

“It was tough to pitch like that,” Soriano said. “Every time when I tried to look at home plate, it was stiff. The focus is not the same. But I just try to help the team the most I can. We didn’t have the result we wanted, but we battled.”

Manager Kurt Suzuki said he was still pleased with the effort that he got from Soriano.

“Tonight I might’ve been the most proud of him for gutting it out and giving us everything he’s got,” Suzuki said. “I know it didn’t come out on our side, but he took the ball and that’s what aces do.”

The Angels (12-19) had won the other six games that Soriano started. Even during the slump of the past two weeks, they still managed to win on Soriano’s days.

This time, though, Soriano was not himself and he had no margin for error the way the Angels were hitting.

The Angels managed nine hits, but they were 1 for 6 with runners in scoring position, leaving 10 on base for the second straight night. They struck out 13 times.

“The other guy (White Sox starter Davis Martin), he pitched,” Suzuki said. “He knew what he was doing. We hit some balls hard and right at guys and in the right spots. Just obviously that one big hit, when we got guys on base, just eluded us. That’s the way baseball goes sometimes.”

Jo Adell’s RBI single produced their only run, in the fourth inning. By the time they got their second run on a Josh Lowe homer in the eighth, they were down by four runs.

Soriano, whose ERA rose to 0.84, wobbled through his outing, so it was something of a success that he got through with only three runs scoring.

After breezing through the first inning on 16 pitches, with three strikeouts, the rest of the game was a relative struggle.

Soriano’s scoreless streak ended at 25⅔ innings when he gave up a solo homer to Colson Montgomery in the second. In the third, he walked the bases loaded. Although he escaped with no runs scoring, he needed 31 pitches.

In the fourth, Soriano gave up a two-run homer to Drew Romo, a 24-year-old catcher who had not homered in his first 62 major league plate appearances. (He hit his second homer against reliever Brent Suter, giving the White Sox an insurance run.)

When Soriano gave up the Romo homer in the fourth, his velocity was down slightly on both his four-seam fastball and his sinker. Soriano said the decreased velocity was not because of his neck, but because he was trying to focus on throwing strikes.

After he got through the fifth, working around two more hits, his 97-pitch outing was over. He said he doesn’t expect the stiff neck to be an issue next time.

“I think in a couple days I’ll be good,” he said. “Just need to keep working on it.”