Zach Neto and Taylor Ward homered while Tyler Anderson tossed seven strong innings Friday night as the visiting Los Angeles Angels bounced the Texas Rangers 9-3.
Anderson (4-4) allowed just two hits and a run, walking two and fanning four. He threw 56 of his 96 pitches for strikes and lowered his earned run average to 2.72. In one stretch, he retired 15 straight hitters.
Andrew Heaney (0-5) lasted only 3 2/3 innings, permitting five hits and three runs, two of them earned. He walked two and fanned five but saw his winless streak extend to nine starts.
Willie Calhoun led Los Angeles’ 14-hit attack by stinging his former team for four hits, scoring twice and knocking in a run. Neto, Ward and Logan O’Hoppe each had two hits.
Texas took a 1-0 second-inning lead when Jonah Heim cracked his fifth homer, a solo shot to left that just cleared the glove of Ward. The Angels didn’t waste much time erasing it, tying the game in the third when Kevin Pillar beat out an infield hit that scored Luis Rengifo from second.
Neto put Los Angeles ahead to stay in the fourth, mashing a slider an estimated 405 feet to left with Jo Adell aboard for his fifth homer. The Angels broke it open in the fifth, reaching reliever Grant Anderson for three runs.
Calhoun grounded an RBI single to right that scored Pillar, followed by Kyren Paris’ two-run single that dropped in front of right fielder Adolis Garcia to make it 6-1. Ward went deep in the sixth, a 395-foot blast to left-center that was his ninth homer.
The Rangers hinted briefly at a comeback against Los Angeles’ shaky bullpen when Marcus Semien cracked a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning, his ninth of the season. But Adell drilled a two-run double to the center field wall in the ninth to end the game’s competitive phase.
Josh Smith was the only Texas batter to collect two hits.
–Field Level Media
