ANAHEIM, Calif. — It was a balanced effort offensively for the Angels on Saturday night.
Every hitter in the lineup collected at least one hit and the Angels were 6-for-12 with runners in scoring position in the Angels’ (47-48) offensive onslaught to beat the Arizona Diamondbacks (46-50), 10-5.
“Against a guy like (Zac Gallen), you've got to get those types of things,” interim manager Ray Montgomery said. “We did a good job, runners in scoring position and getting them into that position, just doing the little things.”
The Angels started the game almost the same as the night before, by having their first three batters of the game reach safely. Zach Neto singled, Nolan Schanuel walked, Mike Trout walked and then Taylor Ward reached on a fielder’s choice to score Neto.
Despite having the bases loaded with no outs, the lone run was all the Angels could muster in the opening frame.
The Diamondbacks responded the very next inning when Eugenio Suárez launched a solo home run into the rocks in center field. Suárez proceeded to give the Diamondbacks the lead in the fourth when he homered again, but this time, he went the other way over the right field wall.
It was the Angels' turn to respond, with some situational hitting helping the Angels jump out to a lead again.
Ward and Jo Adell started the inning with back-to-back doubles to score a run. With a runner on second and nobody out, Yoán Moncada grounded out to first base to move the runner to third, which set up Jorge Soler to hit a sacrifice fly to score Adell.
With two outs and a clean slate on the basepaths, Travid d’Arnaud doubled on the first pitch he saw and then scored on a Luis Rengifo single. By the end of the fourth, the Angels put up three runs to take a 4-2 lead.
The Angels tagged on two more runs in the very next inning when Schanuel singled to lead off the fifth and then Trout hit an opposite-field home run of his own. Trout’s 17th home run of the season puts him five homers away from 400 in his career and his four RBIs in the game bring him six shy of 1,000 in his career.
“Staying inside the ball, I think that's when I'm at my best,” Trout said. “And (staying) through it, I'm not cutting myself down. I'm using the lower half. Everything gets in place.”
In the top of the sixth inning, Yusei Kikuchi ran into trouble when he took a 105-mile-per-hour line drive off his throwing shoulder by Josh Naylor to put runners on first and second with two outs. Randal Grichuk singled in a run to cut the lead in half at 6-3.
Things started to go south for the Angels in the eighth inning as Jose Fermín and Sam Bachman combined for three walks and two hits in the inning, allowing the Diamondbacks to make it a one-run game by scoring two runs. Both runs were Fermín’s.
But the Angels’ offense came alive again in the bottom half of the inning.
The Angels loaded the bases with nobody out to start the bottom of the eighth. After Rengifo struck out, the top of the Angels’ lineup proceeded to hit three consecutive singles to score four runs and break the game open at 10-5.
Connor Brogdon tossed a one-two-three ninth inning to close it out.
José Soriano takes the mound for the Angels in the final game of the first half as the Angels look to get to the .500 mark before the All-Star break.
“No doubt,” Trout said about whether getting back to .500 could be a mental boost for the team heading into the All-Star break. “Finish on a high note, have a good All-Star break. We've got some tough teams coming up, but it would be nice to get to .500, but we've got to come in and go over some stuff and pull for each other.”