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In battle of MVPs, even Mike Trout can’t stop Angels’ skid

Angels outfielder Mike Trout heads back to the dugout after his strikeout against the Dodgers in the ninth inning.

Angels outfielder Mike Trout heads back to the dugout after his strikeout against the Dodgers in the ninth inning.

(Harry How / Getty Images)
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Mike Trout had lost this round of reigning MVP versus reigning MVP, but with Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw out of the game, he had a chance at redemption in the ninth inning.

The Angels were down. Trout stepped to the plate representing the tying run.

Then Kenley Jansen threw a 94-mph fastball past him, and he strode back to the dugout with his head down.

This time not even Trout could produce for the suddenly slumping Angels, who have lost five in a row and eight of nine. The Angels lost, 3-1, thanks to another eight innings of scoreless work from Kershaw, who extended his scoreless streak to 37 innings.

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In the last three games, the Angels have faced the Houston Astros’ Scott Kazmir followed by the Dodgers’ Zack Greinke and Kershaw. They’ve managed just two runs against the three starters.

“We’re running into tough pitchers making tough pitches,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “But if you’re going to win you have to find a way to beat tough pitchers.”

Until Saturday, Trout had been unaffected by the Angels’ malaise. In his previous three games, he had seven hits, three home runs and eight runs batted in. But he’d also missed two games with a wrist injury, and the Angels scuffled.

On Saturday, the first time a reigning most valuable player has hit against a reigning most valuable player, Trout was hitless in four at bats with two strikeouts. The first one, a backdoor breaking ball that parachuted toward the zone at the last moment, left him with his mouth agape.

“Everything was moving, cutting, sinking, sliding, curving,” he said. “The whole bit.”

Without Trout powering the offense, the Angels managed just two hits against Kershaw and two more against Jansen in the ninth inning, when Albert Pujols knocked in the team’s only run with a single.

Right-hander Andrew Heaney pitched “really well,” said Scioscia, but not well enough to match Kershaw. He limited the Dodgers to two runs and four hits in 5 1/3 innings. In the sixth inning, he gave up a run-scoring sacrifice fly to Scott Van Slyke.

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Scioscia had been ejected in the second inning for arguing balls and strikes, so it was bench coach Dino Ebel who decided to pull Heaney after he gave up the first run.

Two batters later, Fernando Salas gave up a two-run home run to Yasmani Grandal on a third consecutive changeup.

“Once you go back-to-back changeups and you go and throw another changeup ... we’re major league hitters, you know?” Grandal said.

The loss was Heaney’s first of the season.

The Angels will finally get a reprieve from the string of aces on Sunday, when the Dodgers will throw Mat Latos, whose 4.48 earned run average is just less than double Kershaw’s. But the Angels will use Cory Rasmus in place of the injured C.J. Wilson.

Rasmus, a reliever, started six times for the Angels last season. His longest start was four innings and 59 pitches. He didn’t say how long he could last on Sunday.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it depends on how many outs I can get.”

Twitter: @zhelfand

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