Chacin leads Angels to win over Tigers

ANAHEIM >> Two pitchers flirted with history on Monday night at Angel Stadium.

With shadows on the field for an early holiday start perhaps making it more difficult on hitters, the Angels’ Jhoulys Chacin stood perfect through four iings, and the Tigers’ Justin Verlander followed right along.

After Chacin sat down three more Detroit batters in the top of the fifth iing, the two had combined to retire 27 batters to start the game.

“I was just, ‘don’t think about it,’http://ngweb.freedom.local:7003/newsgate/images/SmallCode.png” Chacin said. “I was just trying to go out, make my pitches and keep us in the game. Hopefully, we’ll score some runs.”

If Verlander could match Chacin in the bottom half, the right-handers would equal the major-league record.

“Both guys were right on the money early,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “You couldn’t pitch better than either guy through four iings.”

The Dodgers’ Mike Morgan and the Montreal Expos’ Deis Martinez retired the first 30 batters on July 28, 1991, at Dodger Stadium. Martinez finished with the 13th perfect game in baseball history that afteoon.

Chacin (1-1) and Verlander (4-5) did not eclipse the mark. C.J. Cron led off the bottom of the fifth with a single to right field, reaching base in the 28th at-bat of the game and ending the run of perfection.

Chacin’s bid for perfection ended in the top of the sixth, but he did pitch the team’s first complete game of 2016 and his first since 2011 with a four-hitter in a 5-1 victory.

He was buoyed by the Angels’ five-run eighth iing that began off Verlander and continued against reliever Buck Farmer.

For Chacin, his perfect-game bid ended with two outs in the sixth when Andrew Romine, an Angels infielder from 2010-13, hit a ground ball that rolled between shortstop Cliff Peington and third baseman Gregorio Petit.

Romine advanced to third base after Ian Kinsler dropped a single of his own into shallow center field.

But Chacin got out of that iing after he struck out J.D. Martinez on an 84 mph cutter that touched the outside part of the strike zone. Martin couldn’t catch up to it, and Chacin pumped his fist as he left the mound and walked toward the dugout.

The 28-year-old veteran threw a season-high 114 pitches (76 strikes).

“Sometimes what you don’t see from the side is movement, he has really good movement on his fastball,” Scioscia said. “It’s sinking, it’s cutting. But there’s no doubt he was hitting his spots.

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His off-speed pitches worked well, too. PITCHf/x showed that he threw his slider and cutter 41 times. Batters swung 22 times. They missed on 13 of them.

“They had a lot of rightys, so I wanted to have my slider good,” Chacin said.

He finished with a season-high 10 strikeouts. His career high is 12.

“That says a lot,” Scioscia said.

After Johy Giavotella and Rafael Ortega opened the eighth with back-to-back singles, Peington came to the plate with ruers at the coers and no outs. He first attempted to execute a squeeze play, but two bunt attempts went foul, the first nearly caught by diving first baseman Miguel Cabrera.

On the third pitch of the at-bat, Peington smacked a 95 mph fastball from Verlander down the third-base line and Johy Giavotella scored the game’s first run.

Petit then grounded to short, but Romine’s throw home was too late to get Ortega, and James McCa’s subsequent throw to first skipped into right field, scoring Peington.

Verlander left at that point, with Detroit down 3-0.

“Any time you see a pitcher more than one time, kind of get a feel for what he’s likely to do, his tendencies, what he has a feel for, we’re able to scratch out a few,” Giavotella said.

Albert Pujols and Cron added RBI singles off Farmer to extend the lead.

Chacin, who struck out five of Detroit’s first eight batters, threw his third career complete game in his fourth start since being acquired in a trade with Atlanta. His dominance was invaluable after the Angels’ bullpen was taxed in a 13-iing loss to Houston on Sunday.

“If you’re talking about our bullpen, this is just what the doctor ordered,” Scioscia said. “We needed this.”

That factored into why Chacin, though he had not thrown more than 96 pitches this season, was back on the mound for the ninth.

“It definitely let us look at Jhoulys a little differently,” Scioscia added.