May 12, 2008: Nick Adenhart earns first and only career win for Angels

The hopes of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of repeating as division champion in 2008 appeared to be derailed by injuries before the season began.

As players reported to spring training in Tempe, Arizona, number-two starter Kelvim Escobar suffered a reaggravation of a shoulder injury and was certain to begin the season on the disabled list.1 Then in mid-March, ace John Lackey strained his right triceps and was expected to miss the first six weeks of the season.2 The pair had accounted for 37 wins on the previous season’s 94-win squad and their absence opened up the race for the American League West title as well as a competition between two pitching prospects for a major-league roster spot.

Dustin Moseley, a 26-year-old right-hander who had spent the previous season as a swingman on Anaheim’s staff, won a spring competition with 21-year-old Nick Adenhart, who had never pitched above Double A, to open the season in the Angels rotation.3 Moseley struggled with a 7.30 ERA in his first five starts of the season, however, opening the door for Adenhart to get the call from Triple-A Salt Lake City, where he had thrived, going 4-0 with a 0.87 ERA.

Just 21 years old, Adenhart had been a first-round talent who had slipped to the 14th round in the 2004 amateur draft after suffering an arm injury weeks before the draft. After three years spent toiling in the minor leagues, Adenhart got his first big-league start on May 1 at home against Oakland. He allowed five runs in two innings in a no-decision. He was roughed up in Kansas City in his second start, allowing 11 baserunners and three runs in 4⅓ innings in another no-decision. In both starts, he had set the opposition down in order in the first inning only to lose his command in the second, walking six batters and allowing six runs combined in the second inning of the two starts.

Adenhart’s third and final start of the season was back home in Anaheim on Monday, May 12, as the Angels hosted the White Sox. The 22-17 Angels were returning home after suffering a three-game sweep to Tampa Bay that knocked them out of first place. Chicago was in the second stop of a 10-game West Coast road trip and was in third place in the American League Central at 18-19 after taking two of three in Seattle. With Lackey set to rejoin the rotation, Adenhart was expected to return to Salt Lake City after the game, regardless of his performance.4 Squaring off with Adenhart in front of 38,723 fans was veteran 29-year-old southpaw Mark Buehrle (1-4, 5.31).

The pitchers traded zeroes in the first inning with Adenhart retiring the White Sox in order on nine pitches and Buehrle stranding one runner in a 10-pitch inning. Adenhart again had second-inning trouble; the White Sox loaded the bases on two singles and a walk with one out before an infield single by Joe Crede scored the game’s first run and Juan Uribe followed with a two-run single to center. Manager Mike Scioscia stuck with Adenhart, who escaped the jam with a 4-6-3 double play that ended the threat. The White Sox led 3-0.

The Angels answered in the bottom of the frame. Buehrle walked leadoff batter Robb Quinlan, Garret Anderson singled Quinlan to third, and Mike Napoli hit a sacrifice fly to score Quinlan. After a strikeout and another single moved Anderson to second, Gary Matthews brought him home with a base hit to left, and the Angels trailed 3-2 at the end of the second.

Adenhart and Buehrle both set down the opposition in order in the third inning before the White Sox picked up another run in the top of the fourth when a two-out single by Crede scored Nick Swisher. Buehrle made it seven in a row retired when he put the Angels down in order in the home half of the fourth.

Adenhart navigated an imposing trio of batters in the fifth inning, retiring Carlos Quentin on a fly out to deep right field, walking future Hall of Famer Jim Thome, and inducing an inning-ending double play from Paul Konerko. It was the first time in Adenhart’s brief major-league career that he’d made it through the fifth inning.

The Angels reclaimed the lead in the bottom of the fifth when Sean Rodríguez and Matthews singled and Erick Aybar sacrificed the runners to second and third to set up Vladimir Guerrero with a run-scoring opportunity. Buehrle elected to pitch to the slumping right fielder, who was batting .234 with two RBIs in his last 14 games, but Guerrero came through with a three-run home run to put the Angels on top, 5-4. It was Guerrero’s fourth home run of the season. The Angels added one more tally in the inning when Anderson hit a two-out triple to knock in Quinlan.

Now pitching with a two-run lead, Adenhart struck out his first batter of the game, Jermaine Dye, to lead off the sixth before allowing a double to A.J. Pierzynski. Swisher flied out to center for the second out but a walk to Crede prompted Scioscia to remove Adenhart for reliever Chris Bootcheck. After walking Uribe to load the bases, Bootcheck struck out Orlando Cabrera on three pitches to preserve the lead and Adenhart’s chance at his first win.

In the bottom of the sixth, the Angels’ first two batters struck out before a throwing error by third baseman Crede opened the doors to four more Angels runs. Aybar followed the error with an RBI double that chased Buehrle. Guerrero singled Aybar home and Torii Hunter moved Guerrero to third with an infield single, prompting another pitching change. Left-hander Boone Logan’s first pitch was wild, moving both runners into scoring position. They scored on a single by Casey Kotchman. Anderson singled for his third hit of the game before Logan ended the rally by striking out Napoli. The four unearned runs staked the Angels to a 10-4 lead after six innings.

Both teams went in order in the seventh, but the White Sox scored twice in the eighth on an RBI double by Pierzynski and a one-out single by Alexei Ramírez. Scot Shields replaced Bootcheck and escaped the jam with an inning-ending double play off the bat of Uribe.

The White Sox mounted one final rally in the top of the ninth when Cabrera singled and went to second on a throwing error by Angels shortstop Aybar. A wild pitch by Shields and a single by Pablo Ozuna made it 10-7. A walk to Thome prompted Scioscia to turn to his closer, Francisco Rodríguez, who coaxed a groundout from Konerko, allowed an infield single to Dye and then struck out Pierzynski to end the game. Rodriguez was awarded the save, his 15th in 23 Anaheim wins.5

The teams had combined for 28 hits and 17 runs, but Adenhart had earned the first win of his big-league career, going 5⅔ innings and allowing four runs on nine hits and three walks with one strikeout. “There’s only one time for a first – it’s exciting for Nick and the guys are excited for him,” Scioscia said after the game. “That will help him the next time he comes up.”6

“It’s nice to have that first win,” Adenhart said. “This should help.”7 It was not the best start of Adenhart’s Angels’ career. That would come the following April when he made the team out of spring training and pitched six shutout innings in the third game of the season. The Angels bullpen surrendered a 4-0 lead to Oakland in the final two innings, however, costing Adenhart his second victory. 

That start on April 8, 2009, marked the end of Adenhart’s promising young career. A few hours after the game, out celebrating with friends, he was tragically killed in a car accident. Just a few miles from Angels Stadium, the car he was riding in was broadsided at an intersection by a minivan driven by a drunk driver that went through a red light doing 65 miles an hour in a 35-mph zone. Adenhart died in the hospital shortly after the accident; two other passengers were killed, and the fourth miraculously survived critical injuries.8 Adenhart was 22 years and 228 days old.

The tragedy of the following season still in the future, Adenhart was sent down as expected after his sole big-league victory. He did not return to Anaheim in 2008.

With the rotation stabilized upon Lackey’s return, the Angels got hot in July, going 19-6 and opening an insurmountable division lead. They topped the previous season’s success, winning 100 games (21 games ahead of the second-place Texas Rangers) before losing to the Boston Red Sox in the Division Series for the second straight year. Chicago also won its division, by just one game over Minnesota, before losing its Division Series matchup with the Tampa Bay Rays.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ANA/ANA200805120.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2008/B05120ANA2008.htm

Notes

1 “Shoulder Still Bothering Escobar,” Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2008: D6.

2 Mike DiGiovanna, “Arm Strain Sidelines Lackey Until May,” Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2008: D9.

3 Steve Springer, “Moseley Named Fifth Starter,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2008: D15.

4 “Angels Notes,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2008: D6. Lackey did return to the rotation two days later against Chicago, allowing one run in seven innings. He would make his turn in the rotation for the remainder of 2008.

5 Rodríguez recorded 62 saves in 69 chances in 2008, setting a major-league record that had not been topped as of the end of the 2021 season.

6 Mike DiGiovanna, “Adenhart Picks Up First Big League Win,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2008: D6.

7 Mike DiGiovanna, “Adenhart Picks Up First Big League Win.”

8 Christopher Goffard and Christine Hanley, “Promising Young Pitcher Arrives – And Then Is Lost,” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2009: A1.