Angels stun Giants with 9th-inning rally for walk-off win
ANAHEIM — After Mike Trout touched home plate with a run to pull the Angels within two runs in the bottom of the ninth, he had a quick message for Jo Adell as he stepped to the plate with the bases loaded.
“You don’t need to be the hero,” Trout told Adell. “Nice and easy.”
Adell followed the instructions perfectly and ended up as the hero anyway, driving in three runs with a double to give the Angels a thrilling, 5-4, victory over the San Francisco Giants on Sunday.
The Angels had been in an offensive malaise for much of the past week, which Adell said was at least partly because too many players were trying to do too much at the plate. So after Zach Neto was hit by a pitch to force home Trout, the Angels’ three-time MVP had the perfect message for Adell.
“I really let that sink in,” Adell said of Trout’s words. “I got in there, and that was my approach. I wasn’t going in to try to hit a homer or do that. Just get a pitch I think I could handle and put in play forward. And I really needed that (message from Trout). That really helped me in that moment.”
Giants closer Ryan Walker got ahead of Adell, 1-and-2, and then he hung a slider. Adell ripped over the head of third baseman Matt Chapman and into the left field corner. Two runs scored easily, and then Neto came barreling home with the winner, sliding head first into the plate just ahead of the throw.
“Didn’t even look at the left fielder,” Neto said. “Didn’t even look at (third base coach Eric Young Sr.). I wasn’t going to stop.”
When the call was upheld after a brief review, the Angels (11-10) had their most dramatic victory of the young season. They took two of three games from the Giants, who have been one of baseball’s best teams through the season’s first few weeks.
The Angels had lost five of their previous six games heading into this series, mostly because their offense had gone silent. Even though they managed to win one of the first two games against the Giants, they did so by scoring just four runs in the two games. It had been more than a week since the Angels scored more than three runs in a game, so when they trailed 4-1 heading to the bottom of the ninth, it wasn’t looking good.
Trout led off the inning with a walk. Jorge Soler then singled into center.
After Nolan Schanuel struck out, Logan O’Hoppe singled to load the bases. (O’Hoppe had been 3-for-23 slump with 12 strikeouts.) Neto, who earlier in the game hit a homer against Justin Verlander, was then hit by a pitch, forcing in a run.
A few pitches later, Adell capped the rally, giving the Angels their first walk-off victory of the season.
“Just shows you we’re not quitters,” Manager Ron Washington said. “We kept fighting. It was against their closer, and we got into a situation where we had a chance to put it away, and we finally got a big hit in this situation, and that’s what it’s about.”
They also finally won a game when Yusei Kikuchi pitched. The Angels’ Opening Day starter, Kikuchi, has a 3.38 ERA and he’s kept the Angels in all of his games, but they had lost the previous four, mostly because of poor run-support.
Kikuchi gave up one unearned run in 5⅓ innings on Sunday.
The only run he allowed came because of an error by Adell. The Angels’ center fielder missed both cutoff men after fielding a Heliot Ramos double, allowing Ramos to go to third.
Adell was able to atone for the mistake, and the Angels were able to shake off a week of poor offensive production.
Typically, after victories like this one, the temptation is to suggest that this will relieve pressure on the hitters, and they’ll perform better going forward.
Washington wasn’t ready to make that proclamation just yet.
“Anytime you get a win, it does something for you,” Washington said. “And the way we got it today, let’s enjoy it. But we got Pittsburgh coming to town on Tuesday. We’re early in the season, and we just can’t let a win like this all of a sudden think we figured something out. Every day you go out there, you’ve got to figure something out.”