Hirsh's rollercoaster ride goes through another valley

Jason Hirsh's feast-or-famine year went hungry again, and his rally-happy teammates fell short in making up for it.

Salt Lake jumped to a five-run lead on Hirsh and then held on for a 7-6 win as the Sky Sox twice pulled within a run and ended the game with the bases loaded in front of a Wednesday crowd of 6,014 at Security Service Field.

Hirsh, coming off 6 2/3 scoreless innings at Sacramento, continued a trend of good and, as he called them "atrocious," starts that have split his season in half.

In the better eight, he is 3-1 with a 2.72 ERA.

In the other eight, which include Wednesday's six runs in five innings, he is 2-4 with a 10.58 ERA.

"I'm just as confused as everybody else," he said. "I'm just trying to go out there and throw like I have in the past and one day I'm blowing guys away and the next day it's like the catcher's telling them what's coming."

Hirsh said he can feel that he's close, and as a former major leaguer who has been a pitcher of the year in both the Pacific Coast League and the Texas League, he should know.

"I thought I was doing pretty good after my last start," he said. "But you look at it, there's a jam shot here, a broken bat there, a hit-and-run right where the second baseman would have been, two pickoff plays that didn't go our way. The baseball gods were not with me."

Howie Kendrick - the Angels starting second baseman much of the season - had four hits for Salt Lake, including a line drive that didn't miss Hirsh's head by more than a foot.

"It's not that he wasn't hitting his spots," Kendrick said. "It's just that he missed over the plate a couple of times and it seemed like tonight when he made mistakes we were just all over them."

The game featured 27 combined hits, 11 walks, a pair of hit batters and an error - a massive departure from Brandon Hynick's perfect game on Tuesday in a 2-0 win over Portland.