ANAHEIM — Now that the Angels are dealing with the reality of Mike Trout being out for the rest of the season, they are experimenting.
Manager Ron Washington put Jo Adell in center field on Friday night, moving Mickey Moniak over to right field.
“Since we lost Mike, we’re gonna just open it up and see what guys can do,” Washington said. “We already know Moniak can run around out there. We want to see if Jo can run around out there. The way he’s been playing right field, we just want to see what he’s what he can do, to give us options. My intention is to try to get them out there twice a week.”
Adell’s defense in right has been significantly improved, to the point that Washington said he’s been playing “Gold Glove right field.” Adell had started 13 games in center before Friday.
Trout has been the Angels’ presumptive center fielder for more than a decade, but for much of the past four seasons he’s been injured. Although General Manager Perry Minasian said he is confident in Trout’s ability to return next season, he said it was too early to talk about what position he’d play.
The Angels could move him to a corner or even to full-time DH. In either case, they’d need to know what their options are for playing center.
Moniak has shown that he can handle center field defensively, but he hasn’t shown an ability to produce against lefties. He also slumped against righties up until improving over the last six weeks.
Adell has now proven he can play right, but his performance at the plate has been inconsistent. He started strong, went into a slump for a couple of months, and has recently shown more encouraging signs since he abandoned his leg kick.
In addition to the Angels’ defensive experiment with Adell, Washington tried something new in the batting order, moving catcher Logan O’Hoppe into the No. 3 spot. He dropped Taylor Ward to fifth.
Washington had been reluctant to put his young hitters into prime lineup spots because he didn’t want them to change their approach.
“Just trying to figure out down the stretch here if he can,” Washington said. “I know I told you earlier in the year you probably won’t see it. But here it is. We just want to again look and see, the way he’s swinging the bat, look and see if he can handle it. That’s all. Just give us another option, because when he becomes the player that we think he’s gonna become, he’s gonna be somewhere in there.”
Friday was the 45th anniversary of the day legendary New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson died in a plane crash. The next day, the player who took his position on the field was a rookie named Jerry Narron.
Narron is now the Angels’ catching coach.
Narron said on Friday that he still remembers those events “like it was yesterday.”
When the Yankees took the field for that first game without Munson, Narron remained in the dugout to leave the spot behind the plate vacant. Narron was standing next to Manager Yogi Berra as the fans delivered a long standing ovation in Munson’s honor.
“The ovation went 15 or 16 minutes,” Narron said. “Yogi said ‘If you don’t get out there, we’re never going to get this game started.’”
Narron had been in camp with the Yankees for a few years before finally making his debut earlier in the 1979 season, so he got to know Munson well.
“In ninth grade, I put his baseball card in my wallet,” Narron said. “I told him ‘I used to carry your baseball card,’ and he hit me on the top of the head like a big brother would and he said, ‘If you ever tell anybody that I’m going to kick your butt.’ That’s what kind of guy he was. He’d get on anybody, in a good way. And he’d help anybody he could. He was the captain.”
Third baseman Anthony Rendon (back stiffness) was set to hit in the cage on Friday. Washington said “hopefully” Rendon will be activated as soon as he’s eligible, on Tuesday in New York. …
On the day the Angels officially moved first-round draft pick Christian Moore up to Double-A, Washington said the video he watched from Moore’s two games at Class-A showed him the second baseman was ready for a promotion. “From what I’ve seen down at Inland (Empire), he’s a little man among boys,” Washington said. “He should be. He just came out of a big time college (Tennessee) playing in big time games, and he goes down there and plays against 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds. He just looks like he’s ready to go somewhere else and get a challenge.” Moore had six hits in 11 at-bats, with two doubles and a homer.
Mets (LHP David Peterson, 5-1, 3.52 ERA) at Angels (RHP José Soriano, 6-7, 3.69 ERA), Saturday, 6:38 p.m., Bally Sports West, 830 AM
