Ohtani mashes two of Angels five homers in 9-6 win over Rangers
The Angels flexed the full potential of their offense Friday evening, crushing five homers on their way to a 9-6 victory over the Texas Rangers.
Two of those homers came from none other than 2021 MVP Shohei Ohtani, who swatted the first pitch of the game 400+ feet over the centerfield wall at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Jo Adell followed suit in the top of the second inning, when he doubled the Halos lead to 2-0 with a 447-foot solo homer to left field.
With Reid Detmers manning the mound to start for the Angels, the Rangers bats were kept fairly quiet until the fourth inning, when they tacked on five runs to take a 6-2 lead.
Their first run of the matchup came in the bottom of the second on an RBI groundout from Charlie Culberson following a pair of Rangers hits.
Culberson also started the scoring in the fourth, lacing a two-run double to left field.
One batter later, and Detmers was pulled from the game for Angels reliever Austin Warren.
Warren loaded the bases before the Halos made the highly-controversial decision to intentionally walk Corey Seager, driving in another run for Texas, giving them a 4-2 lead.
Another other notable instance of this came in 1998 when Barry Bonds was walked with the bases loaded, though his team was losing at the time of the walk.
The oddities continued following a sacrifice fly from Mitch Garver, when the Halos again allowed a run in bizarre fashion, when Warren balked Marcus Semien in from third.
Detmers finished the contest going 3.1 innings, allowing five runs over six hits, walking one and striking out five, only one of the runs scored in the fourth inning were attributed to Warren.
With the score 6-2 heading into the top of the fifth, the Angels instantly responded with their own five-run inning, courtesy of a solo home run from catcher Kurt Suzuki, Ohtani's second homer of the game, a two-run bomb that went 415 feet, a Jared Walsh single and a Brandon Marsh sacrifice fly - putting them up 7-6.
Walsh tacked another pair of runs onto the board in the top of the seventh with a two-run homer to left.
Raisel Iglesias took the mound in the bottom of the ninth to lock down the win, earning his second save of the young season, striking out two along the way.
A bullpen game in every definition of the word for the Rangers saw seven men toe the rubber, only two of which pitched at least two innings.
Kolby Allard was saddled with the loss, as he allowed all five of the Angels runs that scored in the fifth inning.
The two will face off in the third game of their four-game series Saturday afternoon at 4:05 p.m.
Noah Syndergaard (1-0, 0.00 ERA) is slated to make his second start of the season for the Angels, where he'll go toe-to-toe with the Rangers Taylor Hearn (0-0, 2.25 ERA).