ANAHEIM, Calif. — Michael King plugged one leak and created another.
The result has been a rough couple of outings in which the Yankees’ reliever has not quite been his typically reliable self.
King was on the wrong end of Shohei Ohtani’s latest heroics on Monday night, when the Angels’ two-way star crushed a game-tying, two-run home run in the seventh inning of what became a 4-3, 10-inning loss for the Yankees.
It marked the second straight outing in which King walked a team’s No. 9 hitter with one out and then gave up a two-run homer to its best hitter with two outs.
“It’s burned me now twice in back-to-back outings,” King said.
After posting a 1.65 ERA through his first 19 outings of the season, King has a 6.27 ERA (13 earned runs in 18 ²/₃ innings) over his last 12 appearances with nine walks and four home runs allowed.
He has mixed in some flashes of looking right, including a dominant 3 ¹/₃-inning outing against the Cardinals on July 1, but has not done it consistently enough during a tough stretch for the Yankees.
“I’ve definitely been a little bit off mechanically,” King said. “That kind of correlates directly to confidence. So then instead of going out there and ripping it and having the feeling that I’m going to succeed … I do feel like I’ve made some adjustments that have gotten me back on track a little bit.
“But then you go out there and make a mistake to Ohtani and it burns you. So you gotta keep moving forward and keep a high head. Go out there and attack the next time.”
King said the rotation in his delivery had been “a little off” earlier in the season, which was leading to a decrease in velocity.
He has made the mechanical adjustment to get his velocity back (his four-seam fastball was up 1.8 mph from its season average on Monday), but an unintended side effect has been a lack of command.
“I think it’s just learning that new rotation to make sure I’m in the right spots and then I can consistently deliver pitches in the zones I want to be in,” King said.
There was plenty of talk after the loss Monday about manager Aaron Boone’s decision not to intentionally walk Ohtani in the seventh inning with the Yankees leading 3-1 after giving him a free pass to load the bases with two outs in the fifth inning, when the game was still scoreless.
But the reality is that King also had a 1-2 count on Ohtani before he threw a fastball that caught too much of the plate instead of being out of the zone.
And there was a man on first base for Ohtani to drive in because King had gotten ahead of Eduardo Escobar 0-2, then threw four straight balls to walk him.
“Stuff-wise, [King] was good and then the Escobar at-bat’s the game,” Boone said.
After Ohtani went deep, King walked back-to-back hitters and then hit another to load the bases, forcing Boone to take him out on a night when the bullpen was without Tommy Kahnle, Wandy Peralta and Ian Hamilton because of their recent workloads.
King’s struggles have been part of a tough stretch for a Yankees bullpen that had been one of the best in baseball through the first half of the season.
Lately, though, they have shown some more cracks, especially at a time when the Yankees’ scuffling offense is often giving them little to no margin for error.
As a result of the slide, the Yankees entered Tuesday in sole possession of last place in the AL East.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a big concern, but obviously we don’t like being in last place,” King said. “We need to make a change and we gotta start up this team and really get in a groove here. You guys [reporters] can probably feel it, it’s not a fun locker room to be in when you’re losing.
“We got a lot of ground to make up and I got a lot of faith in the guys we have right here.”
