Angels road woes continue with blowout loss to Marlins

Jeff Fletcher, The Orange County Register on Aug 9, 2026

Published in Baseball

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MIAMI — After beating the Miami Marlins on Friday night, the Los Angeles Angels had a chance to win their first road series in more than two months.

Instead, they got blown out twice, including a 12-3 loss on Sunday.

The Angels (45-73) are limping toward the end of the season, on pace for the first 100-loss season in franchise history. To avoid that, they need 18 victories in their remaining 14 series, which means they’ll need to win an occasional series.

They haven’t won a series since July 20-22 against the St. Louis Cardinals, and they haven’t won a series on the road since May 25-28 at Detroit.

Truth to be told, whether they lose 100 or not is irrelevant to the big picture. The organization’s moves at the trade deadline signaled that they — correctly — are not concerned with how the rest of 2026 goes. For now, they’re simply running auditions to see which players can be part of the solution in 2027 and beyond.

Right-hander Grayson Rodriguez could be one of them. His performance in his return from a year lost to injuries has been a mixed bag, and Sunday’s game included some of everything.

He gave up three runs in the first inning, the result of a combination of his mistakes and poor play by the defense around him.

The first batter of the game, Kyle Stowers, hit a line drive into the right-field corner. Josh Lowe had trouble picking it up, so Stowers was able to easily take third. Lowe was not charged with an error, through the generosity of the official scorer.

After Rodriguez walked Xavier Edwards, he uncorked a wild pitch that allowed Stowers to score.

Otto López reached on an infield single when he hit a chopper to third baseman Denzer Guzman, whose throw was not in time. First baseman Nolan Schanuel fired the ball back to third to try to nail Edwards, but his throw sailed over the head of shortstop Zach Neto, allowing another run.

The Marlins scored their final run of the inning after another walk and a soft, opposite-field single.

Rodriguez settled down for a couple innings, retiring eight in a row, with four strikeouts. That stretch of hitters amounted to the day’s biggest positive on the mound.

In the fourth, Rodriguez walked the first two and gave up another run.

The Angels trailed 4-2 in the fifth, when the Marlins scored six runs against Shaun Anderson. The Angels had used Anderson dozens of times over the past two years, mostly in low leverage spots. In his this case, the Angels’ recent trades stripped down the bullpen, leaving Anderson to pitch in a more important spot.

Catcher Tyler Heineman pitched the eighth, with the Angels down by nine. He gave up one more run.

Even if the bullpen had been perfect after Rodriguez left, the Angels still would have been hard-pressed to win with the current state of their lineup. They haven’t scored more than four runs in a game since July 24. They’ve averaged 2.6 runs while losing 16 of their last 23 games.

They had only seven hits on Sunday, including a double and a homer from José Siri. Moisés Ballesteros, the only big leaguer they added at the deadline, had a single and two hard outs.

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