ANAHEIM, Calif. — Home hasn’t been too welcoming for José Soriano this year.
The sinker baller owned a ghastly 5.65 ERA in 10 starts at Angel Stadium heading into his start Friday night against the Seattle Mariners. Compare that to his 2.48 ERA in 11 starts on the road, Soriano has been two different pitchers this year.
Soriano flipped the script in the Angels' (50-54) 3-2 walk-off win over the Mariners (55-49).
“You've got to keep your mentality strong,” Soriano said through an interpreter. “You're going to have bad outings here and there, but you’ve got to keep the same mentality and keep working.”
Soriano tossed six innings, only giving up two runs on four hits and one walk while striking out five. His only two runs given up were both solo shots hit by Julio Rodríguez.
One of the keys to Soriano’s success Friday night was the use of his splitter. Soriano used his splitter 16 percent of the time Friday night, which is over double his average usage of that pitch this season.
Out of the 14 splitters Soriano threw, only one of them was in the strike zone. But that didn’t matter because he got seven swings off of them and three swing and misses.
“Sometimes you got to use the pitchers that are working and today the split was working and that's why I threw him more,” Soriano said through an interpreter.
On the other side of the ball, the Angels were held quiet due to another stellar pitching performance by Bryan Woo. The Cal Poly San Luis Obispo product had a similar pitching line to Soriano, giving up two runs in six innings on four hits and two walks while striking out six.
On his first career bobblehead night, Zach Neto was the center of the Angels’ offensive success.
Neto led off the bottom half of the first inning with a single to spark a two-run first inning, thanks to a two-run double by Jo Adell to score Neto and Nolan Schanuel.
More Neto heroics had to wait all the way to the 10th inning, when Neto shined on both sides of the ball.
With runners on first and second and nobody out in the top of the 10th inning, J.P. Crawford squared around for the sacrifice bunt, but popped the ball up over the head of the crashing third baseman, Kevin Newman. While covering second base, Neto saw the ball falling behind Newman and raced to the ball and quickly glove-flipped the ball to Ryan Zeferjahn for the unconventional 6-1 forceout.
“The awareness on (Zeferjahn) to in the moment slow it down and get over there was incredible,
and the play (Neto) made was great,” interim manager Ray Montgomery said.
That play helped Zeferjahn get through a shaky 10th inning that saw him throw 18 pitches, but only seven of them for strikes. Despite the lack of consistency, Zeferjahn worked through a scoreless 10th.
“I think that changed the whole inning,” Zeferjahn said. “I was already struggling a little bit, and that gave me a little bit of confidence to go out there and get the next two guys. So that was big out of (Neto) to make that play and to get over there.”
Not only did it help Zeferjahn, but it also set up Neto to put the finishing touches on his bobblehead night.
Logan O’Hoppe hit a deep flyball to right center to move Newman to third base, LaMonte Wade Jr. walked and Luis Rengifo reached on a fielder’s choice that got Newman out from a rundown trying to score.
That set the stage for Neto with runners on first and second with two outs. Neto was out in front of a sweeper and weakly hit it to the right side, but hard enough to barely get past a diving Cole Young for a single to score Wade Jr. to end it.
In his first career bobblehead night, Neto got his first career walkoff.
“My mom had called me this morning and it sucks she couldn't come out because she wanted to come out here to watch, but seeing my messages and she was the first person saying that she can't stop crying, I think it was pretty cool,” Neto said. “Bobblehead night and my first walk-off hit, I think it was pretty special.”