A superb spring in which he pitched well enough to win the Dodgers’ fifth rotation spot ended on a bit of a sour note for Gavin Stone on Monday night.
The right-hander was roughed up for four runs and four hits in 4 ⅓ innings of a 6-0 Freeway Series exhibition loss to the Angels in Dodger Stadium. The three-game series will conclude with a 6 p.m. game in Angel Stadium on Tuesday .
Stone, who went 3-0 with an 0.93 ERA in his first four Cactus League games, giving up one earned run and five hits in 9 ⅔ innings with nine strikeouts and one walk, retired the first five hitters he faced before issuing a two-out walk to Nolan Schanuel and a 116-mph single to center field off the bat of Miguel Sano in the second.
Stone then grooved a 95-mph fastball to Angels catcher Logan O’Hoppe, who crushed a towering 429-foot three-run home run that bounced on top of the netting above the center-field pavilion.
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Stone said, when asked if he wanted the pitch to O’Hoppe back the moment it left his hand. “It should have been in. I just left it over the plate. … But other than that, I felt great. I feel like the command is better on all my pitches. I just left two pitches over the plate.”
The Angels extended the lead to 4-0 in the third inning when Anthony Rendon led off with a double to left center, took third on Aaron Hicks’ groundout to second and scored on Mike Trout’s groundout to shortstop.
They scored two more runs off Dodgers reliever Daniel Hudson in the sixth, an inning that began with a walk to Trout and a Taylor Ward fly ball that dropped between right fielder Teoscar Hernández and center fielder Kendall George for a ground-rule double. Both runners scored on Schanuel’s single to left center.
Angels left-hander Reid Detmers was sharp in his final spring tuneup, giving up three hits, striking out four and walking three in five scoreless innings to close with a 2.45 exhibition ERA.
Detmers drew the ire of the home crowd when he threw a 95-mph fastball just under the nose of Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani, who played his first six years with the Angels before signing a 10-year, $700-million deal with the Dodgers in December, for ball four in the fifth. Ohtani grounded out in his first two at-bats.
