Xander Bogaerts and Bryce Johnson delivered two-out RBIs as the San Diego Padres defeated the Angels 2-1 on Sunday.
Bogaerts broke a scoreless tie with an RBI single in the fourth inning, and Johnson added a two-out RBI single in the seventh as San Diego took two of three games in the series. Johnson finished with two of San Diego’s five hits for his multihit game of the season.
Michael King (3-1) gave up one hit over five scoreless innings, striking out six and walking four while working through traffic. He combined with Ron Marinaccio, Kyle Hart, Bradgley Rodriguez and Mason Miller to hold Los Angeles to two hits.
Miller struck out two in a perfect ninth for his eighth save. He is one inning shy of the longest scoreless streak in Padres history, set by Cla Meredith with 33 2/3 innings in 2006.
The Angels mounted a late threat but couldn’t tie it. Oswald Peraza doubled in the seventh and scored on a sacrifice fly by Zach Neto. But the Angels went 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position and struck out 11 times.
Walbert Ureña (0-2) made his first career start for the Angels, striking out eight and giving up two runs over six-plus innings. He became the fourth pitcher in franchise history to record at least eight strikeouts in his debut.
Ramón Laureano and Fernando Tatis Jr. each drove in two runs apiece, Germán Márquez threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings in a strong start and the San Diego Padres beat the Angels 4-1 on Saturday night.
Adrian Morejon (2-0) struck out two in 1 1/3 scoreless relief innings for the win and Mason Miller earned his seventh save despite giving up a single and a walk in the ninth.
Miller, who has allowed two hits, walked two and struck out 25 in 10 1/3 innings this season, extended his scoreless streak to 31 2/3 innings dating to last Aug. 6.
The teams were in a scoreless tie when Freddy Fermin and Jake Cronenworth opened the eighth with four-pitch walks off Ryan Zeferjahn (1-1). Laureano chopped an RBI single through the middle for a 1-0 lead, snapping San Diego’s 16-inning scoreless streak. Tatis followed with an RBI hit-and-run dribbler through a vacated second-base spot for a 2-0 lead.
The Angels trimmed the deficit to 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth when Logan O’Hoppe and Adam Frazier singled off Jason Adam and Nolan Schanuel hit a two-out RBI single. But Jo Adell grounded out to end the inning.
San Diego pushed the lead to 4-1 in the ninth on Laureano’s sacrifice fly and Tatis’ RBI single.
Márquez gave up two hits, struck out five — all in the fourth and fifth innings — and walked two.
Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi allowed four hits, struck out eight and walked one in six innings.
Jackson Merrill robbed Yoán Moncada of a solo homer with a leaping catch at the right-center-field wall in the second, holding onto the ball as he collided with Tatis.
The game was twice delayed for several minutes. In the second, O’Hoppe, the Angels’ catcher, took a foul tip off his neck. In the fifth a 96-mph fastball from Kikuchi grazed Cronenworth’s chin. Both players remained in the game.
Up next
Padres RHP Michael King (2-1, 2.78 ERA) will face Angels LHP Reid Detmers (1-1, 3.57 ERA) in Sunday’s series finale.
In just five starts, José Soriano’s season with the Angels has gone from good to great — to historic.
Soriano pitched two-hit ball into the sixth inning of the Angels’ 8-0 victory over the Padres on Friday night, ending San Diego’s eight-game winning streak with yet another dominant outing by the Angels’ right-handed Dominican ace.
Soriano (5-0) has an ERA of 0.28 after allowing just one run in his first 32 2/3 innings this season. He leads the majors with 39 strikeouts while allowing only 11 hits, and he’s tied with Milwaukee’s Aaron Ashby for the lead with five wins.
Except for occasional control problems, Soriano has been overwhelming every lineup he faces — and Drake Baldwin’s first-inning homer for Atlanta on April 6 is still the only run he has allowed all season. His 17-inning scoreless streak is the second-longest in the majors this season, and opponents are batting .104 against his 0.73 WHIP — both the best in baseball.
Angels ace José Soriano delivers to the plate during the fifth inning of a win over the San Diego Padres at Angel Stadium on Friday.
(Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Getty Images)
“It’s like a hot knife through butter,” Angels slugger Jo Adell said. “It’s pretty crazy. It’s really special, and he’s a special talent. He’s always had the stuff to compete at this level, and he’s doing what an ace does. Whatever he’s done, just keep doing it.”
And after five straight dominant starts, Soriano has reached rare company.
The most recent pitcher to allow one earned run or fewer in each of his first five starts in a season with at least 15 total innings pitched was the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela in 1981, when he won the NL Cy Young award in his groundbreaking rookie season. Walter Johnson also did it in 1913 — and nobody else.
Soriano is also the only pitcher in major league history to go at least five innings while yielding one or fewer earned runs and three or fewer hits in each of his first five starts to a season.
“I just feel confident to keep pitching like that,” Soriano said. “I believe in my catcher, and we’re on the same page. I think that’s a big part of the results we’re having.”
While Soriano dazzled his previous two opponents with back-to-back, 10-strikeout outings over 15 combined innings to win the AL Player of the Week award, he actually didn’t overwhelm the Padres’ veteran lineup.
San Diego drew four walks and forced Soriano to throw 99 pitches. The Padres loaded the bases in the third before Soriano got Jackson Merrill to ground out, but San Diego eventually chased him with a single and a walk with two outs in the sixth.
“The thing that impressed was that to us, he had to grind a little bit tonight,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said. “I think that’s the maturity showing up, where he’s learning how to pitch — and I say this lightly — without his best stuff. He learned how to navigate a great lineup over there without his best stuff … and it was pretty incredible. You can’t say enough.”
Soriano has a 99-mph fastball and a sinker that ranks among the best in baseball, but he’s also mixing in a curve that has flummoxed his opponents. The combination has been too much for any opponent through his first five starts.
“Knowing him from the past, you always thought of the high-90s sinker, and then he comes in breaking out the curveball,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “That pitch was very impressive from the dugout. Gave our guys trouble at the beginning. It’s really hard to lay off that pitch, and it complements his sinker. He did a great job tonight mixing his pitches. … He’s just a really good pitcher.”
I’d heard Arte Moreno had told people recently that he thought the Angels could command $4 billion. He might sell the team. He might not. But the figure seemed ambitious, since no major league team ever had sold for even $3 billion.
Until Friday, that is, when the Wall Street Journal first reported the San Diego Padres were about to be sold for $3.9 billion.
The new owners: a group led by Jose Feliciano of Santa Monica-based Clearlake Capital, which manages more than $90 billion in assets, and his wife, Kwanza Jones. In 2022, Feliciano and Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly led the investment group that bought Chelsea of the Premier League for $5.2 billion.
The new money should enable the Padres to build upon the legacy of late owner Peter Seidler, who simply disregarded the fact that San Diego ranks as one of the smallest media markets in the major leagues. He spent to win, and the Padres have made the playoffs four times in the past six years — after making the playoffs five times in their first 51 years.
The fans rewarded him, packing Petco Park. As of Friday, the Padres had the second-best record and second-highest attendance in the major leagues. The Dodgers, of course, had the best record and the highest attendance.
The party most immediately interested in the Padres’ sale price? The players’ union, since Commissioner Rob Manfred has cited sluggish appreciation in sale prices as one reason to pursue cost controls on player salaries, whether through a salary cap or some other restriction. In recent years, the owners of the Angels, Minnesota Twins and Washington Nationals all have put their teams on the market without completing a sale.
But Moreno should be interested, too. He turns 80 this summer.
The comparison with the Padres only goes so far. In San Diego, in a city without a team in the NFL, NBA or NHL, the Padres are virtually unchallenged for dollars from fans and corporate sponsors.
And, in San Diego, the Padres play in Southern California’s best ballpark, one the team has turned into a year-round events center, with major concerts in the stadium itself and smaller ones within a delightful park beyond center field.
Could Moreno get $4 billion without a resolution to the long-running ballpark stalemate in Anaheim? It sounds borderline insane to consider that the only available team in America’s second-largest market might not be worth as much as the team that just sold in America’s 30th-largest market.
In Anaheim, however, two deals that would have anchored the Angels there for decades collapsed, and the 60-year-old stadium is in serious need of renovation or replacement. A buyer likely would have to account for the billion-dollar cost of a new ballpark and might ask for a credit against the purchase price, effectively lowering how much profit Moreno could make on the sale.
Any potential buyer should be keeping a close eye on a bill slowly winding its way through the state legislature this year. That bill, if enacted into law, would give the city the ability to loosen development restrictions on the stadium property for a team owner willing to call the team the Anaheim Angels.
Still, even without that legal assist, there should be no shortage of parties interested in acquiring two rarely available assets in one transaction: an MLB team in the Los Angeles market, and a 150-acre site perfect for the mixed-use development coveted by owners in every sport these days.
Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob, who once worked as a peanut vendor at Angel Stadium, lost out in the Padres’ bidding and could take another run at the Angels.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke, who lost out in the Dodgers’ bidding in 2012, surrounded the Rams’ Inglewood stadium and Woodland Hills training site with major development and could consider replicating those successes in Anaheim.
Ducks owner Henry Samueli has denied interest in the Angels, but he could consider extending and complementing his OC Vibe development across the 57 Freeway — and his hockey team already wears the Anaheim name.
That assumes, of course, that Moreno opts to sell. He enjoys owning a team and, in a season in which the Angels are one-half game out of first place entering Friday in what appears to be a weak American League West, there is no hurry.
It is considered more likely that Moreno waits until after a new collective bargaining agreement is reached next year to determine whether to sell. All I can tell you for sure Friday is what one baseball official texted me when I asked for reaction to the Padres’ sale: “Great news for the Angels.”
Garret Anderson, the often misunderstood and always lethal Angels slugger who starred in the 2002 World Series, has died of a heart attack. He was 53.
Anderson’s most memorable moment was belting a decisive three-run double in Game 7 of the only World Series ever played by the Angels. Yet consistency over 17 seasons — 15 with the Angels and one each with the Dodgers and Atlanta Braves — was the hallmark of the taciturn left fielder.
“The Angels Organization is mourning the loss of one of our franchise’s most beloved icons, Garret Anderson,” owner Arte Moreno said Friday in a statement. “Garret was a cornerstone of our organization throughout his 15 seasons and his stoic presence in the outfield and our clubhouse elevated the Angels into an era of continued success, highlighted by the 2002 World Series Championship.
Garret Anderson, who hit the game-winning three-run double, runs with the World Series championship trophy after the Angels beat the San Francisco Giants in Game 7 of the World Series in Anaheim on Oct. 27, 2002.
(Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press)
“Garret will forever hold a special place in the hearts of Angels fans for his professionalism, class, and loyalty throughout his career and beyond. His admiration and respect for the game was immeasurable.”
Nicknamed “G.A.,” Anderson is the Angels leader in games (2,013), at-bats (7,989), hits (2,368), total bases (3,743), extra-base hits (796), doubles (489) and runs batted in (1,292). And he achieved it all without fanfare.
“Garret didn’t seek the limelight,” said Mike DiGiovanna, The Times’ Angels beat writer throughout most of Anderson’s career. “A classic lunch-pail guy. He was a superstar, he just didn’t act like it.”
Fans occasionally booed Anderson for a perceived lack of hustle. He didn’t dive for fly balls and on rare occasions failed to run hard when he hit a ground ball.
His teammates, however, backed him without hesitation, saying he was one of the smartest players in baseball and made the game look easy through hard work.
“He doesn’t dive for balls because he gets there quicker than most guys,” center fielder Darin Erstad said in 2003.
Fans cheered in shock when Anderson made a diving catch against the Minnesota Twins in 2002.
“But, see, that’s what I’m talking about,” he said. “I never should have had to dive for that ball. I got a bad jump. I study hitters. I have an idea of where the ball is going. I don’t dive because I don’t have to.”
The Angels’ Garret Anderson watches the ball after hitting a two-run homer against the Toronto Blue Jays in the seventh inning of a game in Anaheim on July 4, 2008.
(Mark Avery / Associated Press)
Anderson’s understated demeanor fit well in an Angels clubhouse stocked with young, rowdy personalities.
“We have so many emotional guys on this team, Garret is a calming force,” teammate Tim Salmon said in 2003. “He’s criticized for a lack of emotion, but I think it’s good.”
For his part, Anderson possessed a wry sense of humor and wasn’t above poking fun at himself.
“Interesting,” he told The Times Bill Plaschke with a faint smile. “I used to be called lazy. Now that we win a World Series, I’m called graceful.”
After Anderson retired in 2010, he worked as a television analyst for the Angels.
Garret Joseph Anderson was born June 30, 1972, in Los Angeles. He attended Granada Hills Kennedy High, where he starred in baseball and basketball. He remained close to his baseball coach, Manny Alvarado.
“I’ve lost a handful, some of them at a young age, but this one we had a relationship for a long time,” Alvarado said Friday. “I have a ton of memories, some of them from day one and some just recently. The one thing that comes to mind he was kind of an old soul. A lot of major leaguers have a lot to learn from him.
“He was very humble and always picked up the phone. He made it to a lot of alumni games, was very generous.”
Anderson was drafted in 1990 by the Angels in the fourth round and made his major league debut July 27, 1994 versus Oakland before going on to become one of the most productive players in franchise history.
Anderson had a stretch of eight consecutive seasons appearing in at least 150 games for the Angels and played in at least 140 games in 11 of his 17 major league seasons. He was inducted into the Angels’ Hall of Fame in 2016.
“Teammates and fans came to appreciate him for his consistency,” DiGiovanna said. “He was like a metronome.”
In addition to his World Series Game 7 heroics, Anderson batted .300 with four doubles, two home runs and 13 RBIs during the 2002 postseason. He finished fourth in American League Most Valuable Player voting that year.
In 2003, he became the first player since Cal Ripken Jr. to become both the Home Run Derby champion and MVP of the All-Star Game. Anderson batted .293 with 287 home runs in his career.
His final season came with the Dodgers in 2010. At age 38 he batted only .181 but provided a settling influence on young Dodgers stars Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier.
The Angels will honor Anderson by wearing a memorial patch on their jerseys the rest of the season. There will be a moment of silence and a tribute video before Friday’s game.
Anderson is survived by his wife, Teresa, daughters Brianne and Bailey and son Garret “Trey” Anderson III.
Times staff writers Eric Sondheimer and Bill Shaikin contributed to this story.
NEW YORK — Mike Trout hit his fifth homer of the series and the Angels overcame a homer by Aaron Judge in their 11-4 victory over the New York Yankees on Thursday afternoon for a four-game split.
Trout, who recently made a mechanical adjustment, went six for 16 with five homers and nine RBIs in the series. Trout hit his latest homer with one out in the seventh inning when he sent a 2-2 slider from reliever Angel Chivilli about halfway up the left field bleachers for a 7-4 lead.
Trout homered in his fifth straight game at Yankee Stadium and became the fourth to hit five homers in a series against the Yankees. The others were Jimmie Foxx (1933), Darrell Evans (1985) and George Bell (1990), according to MLB researcher Sarah Langs.
Trout’s latest homer contributed to a rare loss for the Yankees when Judge and Giancarlo Stanton homer in the same game. Including the postseason, New York is 53-8 when the duo both connect.
Jo Adell added a grand slam in the eighth for the Angels, who lead the AL with 32 homers.
Judge hit his 89th career first-inning homer and Stanton hit a two-run shot to give the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the fourth before the Angels scored four runs in the sixth off Max Fried (2-1) and Fernando Cruz. Ben Rice also homered in the sixth.
Trout walked three times and scored the tying run in a four-run sixth on a double by former Yankee Oswald Peraza, who also hit a two-run homer in the first.
Vaughn Grissom hit a go-ahead RBI single, and Josh Lowe hit a two-run single for a 6-3 lead.
The Yankees lost for the seventh time in nine games and Fried gave up five runs and three hits in 5 1/3 innings. Manager Aaron Boone was ejected for the first time this season after New York batted in the eighth.
Brent Suter opened the game and went two-plus innings. Sam Aldegheri (1-0) gave up a run in 1 2/3 innings.
NEW YORK — José Caballero laced a two-run double in the bottom of the ninth inning that gave the New York Yankees a 5-4 victory over the Angels, moments after the Angels botched an infield popup in a costly misplay Wednesday night.
Aaron Judge hit his third homer of the series and Trent Grisham had a two-run single for the Yankees, who won for only the second time in eight games after an 8-2 start.
Mike Trout hit his fourth homer in three games, putting the Angels ahead 4-3 with a two-run drive in the fifth.
That was still the score when Jazz Chisholm Jr. popped up to the left side with one out and nobody on in the ninth. But shortstop Zach Neto and ex-Yankees third baseman Oswald Peraza miscommunicated, and the ball dropped between them on the infield dirt for a gift single.
That came back to bite the Angels, who had played outstanding defense all night to that point.
Austin Wells worked a full-count walk against closer Jordan Romano (0-2), and both runners were attempting to steal when Caballero lined a 1-and-2 slider into left-center.
Chisholm easily scored the tying run and third-base coach Luis Rojas aggressively waved Wells home. The catcher barely beat Neto’s relay throw to the plate with a feet-first slide, and the safe call was confirmed after a replay review.
The Dodgers are too good, and too rich. If the owners of other major league teams ultimately deem that combination so objectionable that they shut down the sport this winter because of it, they will risk a rupture in one of the greatest fan bases in American sports history.
The four million tickets the Dodgers sold last season tells one part of the story. Here is an arguably better one: For decades, the Dodgers and Lakers have dominated Los Angeles sports and left every other team far behind in popularity.
For now, after back-to-back World Series championships, the Dodgers have left even the Lakers far behind in popularity, and every other team in town even further behind.
In a Loyola Marymount survey asking Los Angeles County residents to identify their favorite among the 12 pro sports teams within the local media market, nearly half picked the Dodgers.
The Dodgers’ lead over the Lakers — 43% to 28% — represented the largest gap between the teams in the nine editions of the survey, first conducted in 2014 by the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles.
The Rams ranked third, at 7%, followed by the Kings at 5% and the Angels at 4%.
The two women’s teams — Angel City FC and the Sparks — tied for last, each with less than 1% of the vote. Even when the study separated votes by gender, the two women’s teams got less than 1% of the vote from women.
As recently as 2018, five teams beyond the Dodgers and Lakers — the Angels, Clippers, Galaxy, Kings and Rams — attracted at least 4% of the vote. In this year’s survey, only the Rams did.
“I’m a big Rams fan,” said Fernando Guerra, the center’s director, “and I still put the Dodgers first.
“I love all these teams. But, when you have to choose one, it’s the Dodgers.”
Dodgers president Stan Kasten pointed to the popularity and excellence of the players, the cherished ballpark and the generational fan support as factors contributing to the top ranking.
“If you have a lot of good elements but you don’t win, you’re not going to be as high,” Kasten said. “And, if you win but you don’t have the other elements, you’re not going to be as high.
“I think, right now, we’re as close as you can be to clicking on all cylinders.”
In 2018, Ohtani’s debut season with the Angels, 8% of fans that identified themselves as Asian picked the Angels as their favorite team and 34% picked the Dodgers — a terrific showing for the Angels, since the study polls residents in L.A. County, not Orange County.
That demographic this year: 4% picked the Angels, 47% picked the Dodgers.
In their 10 years since returning to Los Angeles, the Rams have made seven playoff appearances and two Super Bowl appearances, winning one. All that, and a half-century in their previous run in L.A., and their membership in the most popular sports league in America, and the best they could do was 7%.
“It’s just tough to break the Lakers’ and Dodgers’ hold,” Guerra said. “It’s not like we don’t love the Rams or the others. It’s just not your top priority.”
The Lakers and Dodgers have combined to win 20 championships in Los Angeles. The other 10 teams that call this market home have combined to win 16.
In the 13 seasons since Mark Walter and Co. bought the Dodgers, the team has won 12 division titles, made five World Series appearances, and won three championships. In the same time, the Lakers have won three division titles, advanced past the first round of the playoffs twice, and won one championship.
Walter bought a controlling interest in the Lakers last year. He has installed Lon Rosen, formerly the Dodgers’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer, as the Lakers’ president of business operations.
“When the Lakers are winning a lot of championships, they’re No. 1,” Rosen said. “When the Dodgers are, they’re No. 1.
“It’s a good position to be in, since we control both teams, and both teams are highly successful.”
In this moment, the Dodgers are highly successful.
“The Lakers and Dodgers are going to be neck and neck very soon,” Rosen said. “The Lakers will 100% be champions again soon.”
The Dodgers do not concede the days of neck and neck will return. Kasten, remember, said the Dodgers were as close as they could be to clicking on all cylinders.
“We don’t take that for granted,” he said. “We know we can do even better.”
