ANAHEIM (News4usonline) – This is not what the Los Angeles Angels expected. Dropping their home opener to the visiting Toronto Blue Jays was hardly in the cards for the Halos. After all, the Angels were feeling good about themselves.
After a six-game stretch on the road, the Angels came home in first place in the American League West Division. The team’s 4-2 start appears to be a good sign of what is to come for Angels fans. And through six innings, the Angels looked very much like they were headed towards their fifth win on the season.
Unfortunately, Major League Baseball games are not won or lost after six innings of play. The outcome of a contest is determined after nine innings. With that said the Blue Jays, despite piling up more hits (9) than the Angels, trailed the home team at Angel Stadium, 3-1, through the first six innings.
Mike Trout’s monster two-run home run in the bottom of the first inning served as the only separator between the two teams. But outside of Trout’s blast into the left-field seats, the Angels didn’t do much offensively. As a matter of fact, the Angels only collected three hits for the entire night.
That would be Trout’s home run and the two hits that Shohei Ohtani came up with. Other than that, the Halos’ bats were quiet. And yet here they were just cruising along until the top of the seventh inning. That’s when the game changed. More specifically, Toronto shortstop Bo Bichette changed things.
With two men on base, and with two outs, Bichette took a Jimmy Herget offering across the plate and sent it into the left centerfield bleachers to give the Blue Jays a 4-3 lead. Just like that, the Angels saw their two-run advantage, disappear into the Orange County evening.
Even though he had given up six hits in his six innings of action, pitcher Patrick Sandoval yielded only one run. It was a good night’s worth of work for Sandoval. It’s too bad that the Angels’ bullpen failed to protect that two-run cushion he had worked through.
Featured Image Caption: Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout (27) looks at his two-run home run leave the ballpark against the Toronto Blue Jays on April 7, 2023. Photo by Dennis J. Freeman/News4usonline
Dennis has covered and written about politics, crime, social justice, sports, and entertainment. Dennis currently covers the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, and Olympic sports. Dennis is the editor of News4usonline.com and serves as the publisher of the Compton Bulletin newspaper. He earned a journalism degree from Howard University.