Ricky Nolasco has a rough night in Angels' loss to Royals

ANAHEIM >> The Angels are still waiting for the Ricky Nolasco who was so encouraging at the end of last season.

This year’s version has been markedly different, pitching inconsistently except for one maddening constant: balls flying over the fences.

Nolasco gave up two more homers, increasing his league-leading total to 21, in the Angels’ 7-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals on Thursday night.

“With Ricky, it’s pretty simple,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “It’s just his command, being able to repeat a release point.”

Nolasco gave up five runs in six-plus iings, raising his ERA to 5.01. He has not been the pitcher who had a 3.21 ERA in the last two months of 2016, after the Angels got him from the Miesota Twins.

Scioscia said Nolasco and pitching Charlie Nagy have been “working very hard between starts, trying to find that timing, tempo and delivery he had for the last dozen starts last year where he was locked in. He’s working hard. Hopefully he’ll find it, because he’ll give us a big lift.”

Nolasco seems as puzzled as anyone as to what’s gone wrong.

“Just keep grinding,” he said. “That’s all I can do.”

The most mystifying part of his troubles have been the homers. Lorenzo Cain and Alex Gordon took him deep in the third and fourth iings, putting the Angels behind 4-1.

Coming into this season, Nolasco had allowed 1.1 homers per nine iings over 11 seasons in the majors. The most homers he had allowed in a season was 28, back in 2008.

This season is not even half over and he’s on pace to shatter that, having allowed 2.4 homers per nine iings.

On the positive side, Nolasco has allowed 16 of the homers with the bases empty. Despite his rough outing, the Angels were within reach, if they could have mustered much offensively.

Facing lefty Matt Strahm, who was making his first big league start, the Angels scored an uneaed run in the first iing, and then nothing else through Strahm’s five iings.

The Angels had just three hits against Strahm.

In the fifth iing, Day Espinosa appeared to hit a homer down the left-field line. After a review, though, umpires ruled his shot had passed just foul of the pole. Espinosa then struck out.

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The Angels got that run back in the sixth. Cameron Maybin singled and scored on Yunel Escobar’s single to pull within 4-2.

But before the Angels could bat again, the game got away.

The Royals scored three runs in the seventh, including one unsightly sequence. Sal Perez’s bloop into shallow center dropped, despite first baseman C.J. Cron, second baseman Espinosa and right fielder Kole Calhoun converging on it. Perez was then able to go to second when the throw came to the plate.

Perez and Eric Hosmer then scored on a Mike Moustakas single, putting the Royals up 7-2.

The first of the three seventh-iing runs was charged to Nolasco, who could at least take some solace in the fact that he made it that far.

“I was able to throw up some zeroes in the fifth and sixth to get to the seventh,” he said. “At the end of the day, I just put us in a hole, and it’s kind of hard to dig out.”

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