Trout reached the milestone in the eighth inning when he hit a 485-foot solo homer to left-center field off Rockies reliever Jaden Hill to extend the Angels’ lead to 3-0.
The three-time American League MVP had just one home run in his previous 36 games.
Taylor Ward and Nolan Schanuel also homered for the Angels, who snapped an eight-game losing streak. Ward’s home run was his 34th of the season, tying him for the 10th-most in the majors.
In his 300th career start, and his first since giving up a career-high nine earned runs in a Sept. 14 loss to the Seattle Mariners, Hendricks (8-10) allowed just three hits and struck out five batters with no walks. He has given up three or fewer earned runs in 13 of his past 18 starts.
Luis García earned his second save of the season after getting Jordan Beck to ground into a game-ending double play with the bases loaded.
Colorado starter Germán Márquez (3-15) pitched a strong game in which he gave up four hits and two earned runs while striking out five in a season-high seven innings.
Hunter Goodman had two of the Rockies’ five hits.
Angels star Mike Trout hits his 400th career home run in a 3-0 win over the Colorado Rockies.
Key moment: Ward’s solo homer in the second inning broke a scoreless tie and gave the Angels a lead they wouldn’t surrender.
Key stat: With his benchmark home run, Trout has a batting average of .400 with six homers and 12 RBIs in 15 career games at Coors Field.
Up next: Colorado LHP Kyle Freeland (4-16, 5.14 ERA) will take on a yet-to-be-announced Angels starter on Sunday in the finale of the three-game series.
It was picture day at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday, one of those quaint baseball traditions that has endured long past its usefulness.
So the team set up three rows of aluminum risers in shallow center field and the players, wearing impossibly white uniforms, filed out of the clubhouse just before 3 p.m., passing up batting practice to pose for the cameras. For a sport that thrives on routine, the afternoon had a unique last-day-of-school vibe.
“It’s a weird day,” manager Dave Roberts agreed.
But picture day also serves to bring the end of the season into tighter focus since it usually happens in the final three weeks. And the players who climb those risers are the ones who will decide the team’s postseason fate.
That was especially true for the Dodgers, who rode another splendid pitching performance — this one from Emmet Sheehan — to a 7-2 victory over the Colorado Rockies. Sheehan, bidding for a spot in the playoff rotation, was backed by four homers, including a pair of solo shots from Teoscar Hernández, who had his first three-hit night in more than a month.
The win, the team’s third in a row, coupled with San Diego’s loss to Cincinnati, expanded the Dodgers’ lead in the National League West to two games over the second-place Padres with just 17 left to play.
“It’s getting down to the wire,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers’ starting pitching is already in postseason form, posting a 1.41 ERA over the past five games. On Tuesday it was Sheehan’s turn on the mound and he set down the first 15 Rockies in order, becoming the third Dodger starter in four games to take a no-hitter into the sixth inning.
He wound up scattering three hits and a walk over seven innings, striking out nine to earn his fourth victory in five decisions. The win was also Sheehan’s fourth victory in as many appearances against Colorado.
Roberts said his team’s starting pitchers are all competing to one-up each other, giving the significance of the games now.
“They’re feeding off one another,” he said. “The pitchers are of the mind that these are very, very important games. It’s kind of the playoff mentality. The catchers are calling games in that vein.
“The defense has been really focused getting off the baseball. There’s a heightened level of focus across the board.”
That even spread to the offense, said Mookie Betts, whose two-run home run in the third extended his streak of reaching base safely to 15 straight games.
Mookie Betts is very happy after his two-run homer in the third inning.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s really neat being on this side,” Betts, who had multiple RBIs for a fourth straight game, said of watching the Dodger pitchers work. “If you kind of take a step back and look at it, there’s a lot of teams that would ask for something like this. Those guys give us opportunity to win every day.
“It’s really important for us as on the offensive side not to take that for granted.”
Although the Dodgers entered Tuesday second to last in the majors with an average of 3.14 runs a game in September, against Colorado starter Germán Márquez (3-13), whose ERA (6.31) looks more like a mortgage rate, they ran out to a 5-0 lead after five innings. As a result the focus turned to Sheehan, who needed just 59 pitches to cruise through five perfect innings, striking out five.
“I probably knew,” Sheehan, pitching on the 60th anniversary of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, said when asked if he was aware he was more than halfway to matching that. “But I was definitely not thinking about it.”
The right-hander said he tried to cross up the Rockies by moving away from his fastball and going with a slider to the glove side instead.
“I felt like I was executing the slider pretty well,” he said. “The more I throw it, the easier it gets to get it to that spot. It’s an important pitch for me.”
Kyle Karros ended the suspense when he lined Sheehan’s first pitch of the sixth inning over a leaping Max Muncy at third for a single. Two more singles brought Karros around to score, ending the shutout as well.
Still Sheehan (6-3) was more than good enough to win for the fourth time in five decisions, lowering his ERA to 3.32 and forcing his way into the conversation over a role on the postseason roster.
“He’s unflappable,” Roberts said. “He knows he’s talented and he knows how to execute pitches. He’s got good stuff. No moment is too big for him. So I can’t speak to what role, but I know that he’s a viable option for us now and going forward.”
Tuesday’s win also left Sheehan unbeaten on picture day, something he nearly skipped as the scheduled starting pitcher.
“I wasn’t going go out there,” he said. “But I was like, I missed the last two. I gotta be out there.”
WEST SACRAMENTO — Luis Morales struck out five in his second career start, Brent Rooker and Colby Thomas hit home runs, and the Athletics beat the Angels 7-2 on Saturday night.
Morales (1-0) threw five innings and gave up one run, walking two, in his third career appearance. He has surrendered two runs in 9⅔ innings since his Aug. 1 call-up.
Thomas’ two-run homer, his third of the year, put the A’s on the board in the first inning.
Darell Hernaiz drove in two on a third-inning single, and Rooker padded the A’s lead with his solo homer in the fifth.
Brett Harris and Rooker added insurance in the eighth with RBI singles. Sean Newcomb threw 1⅔ innings and struck out three to earn his first save of the year.
Nolan Schanuel had three hits, and Angels’ starter Tyler Anderson (2-8) yielded four earned runs, three hits, and issued five walks in the loss.
The A’s have won six of their last 10 games, while the Angels have lost six of their last 10.
Morales walked the bases loaded with two outs in the top of the first, but worked his way out of the jam with no runs scored. He only allowed one more runner to reach scoring position for the rest of his outing.
It was quality over quantity for the Dodgers on Monday night. A bunch of empty at-bats, salvaged by a few emphatic drives that left the ballpark.
In six innings against struggling Minnesota Twins starter David Festa, the Dodgers’ slumping offense managed only four hits — doing little to quell the offensive concerns that have mounted during a puzzling month of poor all-around production.
Three of the knocks, however, went over the fence, with a two-run blast from Shohei Ohtani in the first inning and a pair of solo homers from Will Smith in the fourth and sixth lifting the team to a 5-2 win at Dodger Stadium.
A course correction, this was not for the Dodgers’ supposed powerhouse offense.
Entering the night, the team had the third-lowest team batting average in the majors this month. As even president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman acknowledged during pregame batting practice, “we’ve had more than half of our lineup really scuffle” for the last six weeks running.
“The offense scuffling the way it has,” Friedman added, “was something that I didn’t expect over this kind of protracted period of time.”
On Monday, though, the Dodgers did rectify at least one issue plaguing their recent offensive struggles. After hitting only 19 total home runs in their first 15 games in July, they went deep four times against the Twins (48-52), with Andy Pages adding an insurance shot in the seventh inning against reliever Cole Sands. It marked only the fifth time this season they hit at least four homers in a single contest.
Ohtani provided the night’s first big swing, immediately erasing the leadoff blast he gave up to Byron Buxton in the top of the first while making his sixth pitching start of the season.
In his second game occupying the second spot in the batting order, the two-way star wasn’t forced to rush between the mound and the plate (something manager Dave Roberts hoped would be a side benefit of replacing him with Mookie Betts as the team’s leadoff hitter). He was able to go through his normal routine of on-deck swings while watching Betts draw a five-pitch walk.
Then, for the first time in his six games as a pitcher this season, Ohtani not only got a hit, but clobbered a hanging changeup in a 2-and-1 count, launching his 35th home run of the season 441 feet to straightaway center.
From there, the Dodgers (59-42) kept playing long ball.
Festa, a second-year right-hander who entered the night with a 5.25 earned-run average, retired the next nine batters he faced before Smith came up to lead off the fourth.
Festa got ahead 1-and-2 in the count, before throwing a changeup that Smith fought off and missing wide with a slider. Festa’s next pitch was a fastball left over middle. Smith, the one Dodgers hitter who has been swinging a hot bat of late, didn’t miss it, going the other way to make the score 3-1.
Festa was still in the game when Smith came back up in the sixth. Once again, the pitcher made a mistake, hanging a slider over the heart of the plate. Once again, Smith was all over it, sending a souvenir into the left-field pavilion for his 14th home run, and first multi-homer game since last July.
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1.Shohei Ohtani rounds first after hitting a two-run homer Monday against the Twins.2.Dodgers catcher Will Smith, right, celebrates with Freddie Freeman after hitting a solo home run in the fourth inning.3.Dodgers center fielder James Outman ends the game with a jumping catch at the wall in straightaway center field.(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
With the two blasts, Smith raised his National League-leading batting average to .327. Since the start of July, he is 15 for 40 with a 1.163 OPS.
By the time Pages added to the lead in the seventh, whacking his 18th of the season deep to left, the game was already in hand.
Despite giving up plenty of hard contact and lacking the pinpoint command he’d flashed in his previous starts, Ohtani kept the Twins off the board over the rest of his three-inning outing, collecting three strikeouts over a season-high 46 pitches to finish the night with a 1.50 ERA.
After that, converted starter Dustin May followed with a productive bulk outing from the bullpen, scattering five hits over 4 ⅔ scoreless innings.
Dodgers closer Tanner Scott walks off the field with trainer Greg Barajas, left, after sustaining an injury during the ninth inning Monday.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers did not get out of Monday unscathed. In the top of the ninth, closer Tanner Scott left the game alongside a trainer after walking one batter, hitting another and then spiking a slider that left him grimacing.
As he left the field, he appeared to be flexing his left throwing arm — a potentially troubling sign for a Dodgers team that was already in need of bullpen reinforcements ahead of next week’s trade deadline.
Roberts said Scott felt a “sting” in his forearm and is “emotionally not well.” He will undergo an MRI exam Tuesday.
But on Monday, at least, the team survived, with James Outman denying Carlos Correa a potential tying three-run homer off Scott’s replacement, Kirby Yates, with a leaping catch at the center-field wall for the night’s final out.
NEW YORK — Juan Soto hit a tying single in the seventh inning, Francisco Alvarez delivered a big double in his return from the minors and the New York Mets rallied past the Angels 7-5 on Monday night.
Brett Baty launched a two-run homer for the Mets, who erased an early four-run deficit to match their largest comeback victory this season. They scored the go-ahead run in the eighth on an error by catcher Logan O’Hoppe, and Brandon Nimmo added a sacrifice fly that made it 7-5.
Brooks Raley (1-0) pitched a scoreless eighth in his second outing since coming back from Tommy John surgery, earning his first win since April 2024.
Edwin Díaz struck out the 2-3-4 hitters in the ninth for his 20th save in 22 opportunities.
Taylor Ward had three RBIs for the Angels, who tagged ineffective Mets ace Kodai Senga for four earned runs in three innings. O’Hoppe, who grew up on Long Island about 45 miles from Citi Field, hit a solo homer.
Baty’s homer off starter Tyler Anderson trimmed it to 4-2 in the fourth.
Trailing 5-2, the Mets loaded the bases with nobody out in the seventh. Francisco Lindor beat out a potential double-play ball to drive in a run, then stole second. Soto tied it when he grounded a two-run single off reliever Reid Detmers.
Key moment: José Fermin (2-1) walked Baty with one out in the eighth, and he went to third when Alvarez doubled off the right-field fence over Chris Taylor’s head.
Third baseman Luis Rengifo went to his knees to snag a grounder by pinch-hitter Ronny Mauricio, then spun around and had difficulty getting the ball out of his glove. Rengifo’s low, wide throw to the plate went off O’Hoppe’s mitt, allowing Baty to score.
Key stats: Senga had permitted three earned runs or fewer in 31 straight starts dating to June 23, 2023, which was the longest active streak in the majors. … Lindor went 0 for 5 and is hitless in his last 26 at-bats. … Anderson is winless in 16 starts since beating San Francisco on April 18. He is 0-6 during that stretch.
Jo Adell homered twice, Chris Taylor also went deep and the Angels rallied from four runs down and beat the Seattle Mariners 8-6 on Saturday night.
Cal Raleigh homered twice — giving him a major league-leading 26 — and drove in four runs for the Mariners, who have lost five straight and 12 of their last 17 games.
Angels closer Kenley Jansen, who gave up Raleigh’s solo homer in the ninth, finished up for his 14th save.
Angels teammates Zach Neto, left, and Jo Adell celebrate after an 8-6 win over the Mariners on Saturday.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
Taylor replaced injured right fielder Jorge Soler (groin tightness) to start the second and led off with a homer off Mariners right-hander Luis Castillo (4-4). Two outs later, Adell hit a 431-foot solo shot to left-center to trim Seattle’s lead to 4-2.
The Angels took advantage of two Mariners errors to score twice in the third to tie the score 4-4, and Adell’s 445-foot homer to center put them ahead 5-4 in the fourth.
Doubles by Nolan Schanuel and Taylor Ward pushed the lead to 6-4 in the fifth, and Zach Neto’s RBI single made it 7-5 in the sixth. Adell added an RBI single in the seventh for a three-run lead as the Angels scored in six consecutive innings for the first time since 2011.
Adell is 13 for 32 (.406) with five homers, two doubles and nine RBIs in his last 10 games, raising his season average from .184 to .224.
Seattle center fielder Julio Rodríguez, who singled in his first two at-bats, was knocked out of the game in the third after Randy Arozarena’s hard grounder hit him above the right ankle while Rodríguez was trying to steal third base.
Cole Young doubled and scored in the second and hit an RBI single in the sixth for the Mariners.
Connor Brogdon (1-0) replaced Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz with runners on first and third and one out in the fourth. He struck out J.P. Crawford, walked Jorge Polanco and got Leody Taveras to fly out with the bases loaded to preserve a 4-4 tie.
Stephenson out indefinitely
A pair of MRI tests revealed no structural damage to Robert Stephenson’s surgically repaired right elbow, but the Angels reliever was diagnosed with a stretched biceps nerve that will sideline him indefinitely.
“The good news is there’s no major injury or anything. It’s just a matter of how long it’s going to take,” Stephenson said Saturday night before a game against the Seattle Mariners. “It could be something that disappears overnight. It could be something that takes a couple weeks or longer. They’re kind of tricky.”
The 32-year-old Stephenson was expected to be one of the team’s top relievers after signing a three-year, $33-million deal in January 2024, but he missed all of last season after undergoing an ulnar collateral ligament repair with an internal brace in May 2024.
