A late replacement, Zach Plesac shines in his Angels debut

ANAHEIM — Approximately 2½ hours before first pitch Monday night, the Angels’ medical staff told Angels manager Ron Washington he needed to find a new starter.

There was little time for discussion. Jose Soriano, the young starter-turned-reliever and bright spot in an otherwise frustrating Angels season, had abdominal pain. He couldn’t go. Faced with precious few alternatives, and a potential replacement in Jose Suarez designated for assignment earlier in the day, a thought popped into Washington’s head.

Plesac just arrived.

And thus, a few meager hours after he’d stepped his first gleeful foot inside the Angels’ clubhouse, 29-year-old Zach Plesac took the mound against the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers in a pair of bright-orange cleats.

He hadn’t pitched in a Major League game all year, spending 13 starts in Triple-A. Heck, he hadn’t much as thrown that day – or heard the news directly from Washington – before the Angels’ manager told reporters he would start in Soriano’s place. But Plesac gritted through six strong innings on Monday night, authoring a quality start and giving the bullpen some much-needed relief in pitching the Angels (29-43) to a 5-3 win.

“I mean, that’s what you call a dawg right there,” shortstop Zach Neto said postgame, marveling at Plesac’s composure.

Neto bombed a two-run homer, third baseman Luis Guillorme knocked an RBI triple during a three-run third and relievers Luis Garcia, Matt Moore and Carlos Estevez shut the door as Plesac buoyed the Angels to their fourth win in six games.

Earlier Monday afternoon, Plesac spoke to reporters wholly unaware of his impending fate, speaking in a soft grin upon his re-introduction to the majors. Once a promising young arm in Cleveland’s system who posted a 2.28 ERA in eight starts during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Plesac’s major-league fates had slowly slipped before being DFA’d altogether in 2023, picked up by the Angels this winter and sent to Triple-A Salt Lake.

With Suarez’s struggles and Reid Detmers’ demotion, though, Plesac hopped on a flight from Salt Lake Monday morning, brought up as an innings-eater and potential fifth-starter option. Whatever they needed, he emphasized, speaking like a Golden Retriever simply happy to be taken to the park.

“I’ll be prepared to do whatever they want me to do,” Plesac said, when asked what had been communicated to him about his role. “I’m sure we’ll have that talk at some point in the week or whatever, but right now just going to clean up tonight and be ready if Wash calls my name.”

There was no cleaning up. With Soriano’s status unclear – and still unclear postgame, Washington or the Angels not pinpointing the severity or source of his abdominal pain – Plesac earned the nod, the Angels in desperate need of a warm body who could grind out a few innings.

“I don’t think when he flew here, this was his idea,” Washington cracked pregame. “But, it is what it is.”

Plesac ran into trouble early after a 1-2-3 first inning, walking Willy Adames and then serving up an 89-mph meatball to Jake Bauers that was promptly deposited beyond the right field wall. But he didn’t blink, carrying a veteran’s confidence, ripping a slider-fastball mix that avoided enough barrels to give the gloves behind him a shot.

In the third, after a bobble by center fielder Mickey Moniak turned a leadoff single from the Brewers’ Brice Turang into two bases, Plesac induced three straight flyouts from the heart of Milwaukee’s order to escape. In the fifth, he surrendered a solo shot to Turang but got three outs on a fielder’s choice, a pickoff and a flyout.

Washington sent Plesac out, then, for the sixth, a show of trust in a pitcher who had arrived the same day.

“He asked me if I felt good, and I did,” Plesac recalled, postgame. “And he ran it, so, he played the right cards.”

Promptly, Plesac induced weak contact from Christian Yelich, Adames and Bauers for final outs of the night, returning to the dugout for a hearty embrace and a well-earned pat on the back from Washington.

As he battled, the Angels’ bats strung together some life behind him, a quietly effective unit over the last couple of series continuing to round into form. In the third, the oft-trigger-happy Jo Adell worked a nine-pitch walk after falling behind 0-and-2, preceding the triple by Guillorme and a single by Nolan Schanuel for the Angels’ first two runs. An inning later, the scorching-hot Neto ripped an offering by Brewers starter Carlos Rodriguez into the stands for his 10th homer of the year, giving the Angels a lead they never relinquished.