Mike Trout’s 9th-inning homer keys Angels’ victory over Cardinals
ST. LOUIS — It would be an understatement to say Mike Trout was fired up when he returned to the dugout after his ninth-inning go-ahead homer on Wednesday night.
“I might have a broken finger right now because he came in swinging at everybody,” Manager Phil Nevin said after the Angels completed a 6-4 victory over the reeling St. Louis Cardinals, their most dramatic victory of the season.
The Angels trailed by a run in the ninth, but pinch-hitter Jake Lamb led off with a 434-foot homer against Cardinals closer Giovanny Gallegos. An out later, Trout yanked a ball just over the fence down the left field line. It was, surprisingly, just the seventh time in his career that he’s driven in the go-ahead run in the ninth inning or later. Many times he doesn’t see a pitch to hit when the game is on the line.
The Angels added an insurance run on a Shohei Ohtani double and an Anthony Rendon single, and then closer Carlos Estévez finished off the Angels’ third straight victory.
“It means a lot,” Trout said. “These are the ones you look back on at the end of the year. They add up. We gotta take this momentum into tomorrow.”
When the Angels go for the sweep on Thursday, they will likely be without shortstop Zach Neto, who suffered a bruised and lacerated right middle finger when he was trying to bunt in the fifth inning. Neto left the game and underwent X-rays that showed nothing broken, so the Angels are hoping he’ll simply miss one game.
“I think we dodged a bullet,” Nevin said.
Ohtani also escaped without taking a loss on a night when he came briefly undone in one bad inning. Despite 13 strikeouts, equaling his career high, Ohtani gave up four runs in five innings. Three of them scored in one four-batter span in the fourth, when the Cardinals jumped on some misplaced sweepers for two doubles and a Dylan Carlson two-run homer.
At that point, the Angels trailed 4-3.
They couldn’t convert on scoring chances in the sixth or seventh, leaving two runners in each inning, and they were down to their final three outs when Gallegos came to the mound in the ninth. Cardinals fans, accustomed to seeing their team contend annually, were eager to see a victory after nine losses in the previous 11 games.
Lamb immediately took the air out of the ballpark when Gallegos hung a 2-and-2 slider and he hammered it deep over the right field fence. While pinch-hitters normally say the approach is to simply try to make contact and get on base any way possible, Lamb did much better.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, but when you get a spinner like that, and you’re able to catch it out front and get some air, they usually go a long ways,” Lamb said.
A few moments after the Lamb homer, Trout stepped to the plate carrying a 1-for-11 slump that followed his pair of two-run homers on Saturday. He had struck out, hit a pair of groundouts and been hit by a pitch earlier on Wednesday.
“If you look at the last couple days, I’ve been in between, been hitting a lot of ground balls, swinging at pitches out of the zone,” Trout said. “That’s just good to be able to barrel one and help the team win.”
Gallegos threw him a slider and Trout hit it out, causing the ballpark to erupt with boos.
It was the fifth time in Trout’s career that he hit a go-ahead homer in the ninth inning or later. He hit a 10th-inning homer last year in Seattle, and before that, he hadn’t done it since 2015.
The Angels padded the lead when Rendon drove in Ohtani, who had doubled against Gallegos – just as he had to spark the winning rally for Japan against Mexico in the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic back in March.
It was the third hit of the night for Ohtani, whose performance on the mound was uneven. He had a 3-1 lead in the third, but he gave it back in the fourth and he was done after 97 pitches in five innings.
“Obviously I gave up a couple of homers,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “Those hurt. I wanted to get through six or seven innings minimum. More than the strikeouts. I’m more disappointed that I couldn’t get that far in the game.”
Ohtani, who recorded his 500th career strikeout, was staring at his first loss of the young season until the Angels (17-14) bailed him out with the rally in the ninth, getting to three games over .500 for the first time this season.
Relievers Chase Silseth (two innings) and Ryan Tepera (one) held down the Cardinals until the Angels could re-take the lead.
“We’re still playing pretty good baseball,” Lamb said. “And I think this whole room knows that. We haven’t put it all together yet. But I look at that personally as a positive, because we can only get better. To battle through a game like that – have the lead, lose lead, all that – that’s huge. That says a lot about this team, especially here, in this park.”
Wham Bam Thank You Lamb
Pinch hitting Jake Lamb ties it up in the 9th @Angels | #GoHalos pic.twitter.com/w30Y0HBqYO— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) May 4, 2023
Big comeback for the @Angels, @MikeTrout right in the middle of it. pic.twitter.com/VATh26TxlY
— MLB (@MLB) May 4, 2023
Mike Trout still gets excited about doing Mike Trout things @Angels | #GoHalos pic.twitter.com/4JIhkfP1so
— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) May 4, 2023
13 Ks ties a career high for Shohei Ohtani. pic.twitter.com/0g5ZnyxoDE
— MLB (@MLB) May 4, 2023