The Anaheim miracle: Angels dodge history and pull it out in six pitches!
Baseball can be brutal, but on Monday night at Angel Stadium it delivered a finish straight out of a movie. Heading into the ninth, A’s pitcher J.T. Ginn was on the brink of history with a no-hitter. Six pitches later, it had all fallen apart. Adam Frazier broke it up with a single, then Zach Neto launched a two-run homer to seal a wild 2-1 walk-off win for the Angels. It snapped a miserable six-game skid.
Zach Neto delivers when it matters most
That blast, Neto’s eighth of the season, could hardly have come at a better time for a player who had been stuck in a rough patch at the plate. He sent Ginn’s 105th pitch into the centre-field seats and joined a tiny club: only the third time since 1961 in the majors that a team without a hit through eight innings has gone on to win on a walk-off homer. “It was huge for us, to let the pressure out and actually sleep tonight,” the match winner said.
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The last-chance team talk
So what sparked the comeback? Pure togetherness. Neto said the players gathered for a quick huddle just before the ninth, with the scoreboard still showing a brutal zero in the hits column. “That was the most electric speech of my life,” Neto admitted. “Everybody was hyping each other up, nobody quit.” That kind of fight means the Angels keep their remarkable run alive: 4,227 straight games without being no-hit, the longest active streak in the majors.
A pitchers’ duel for the ages
Before the late drama, the night belonged to the arms on both sides. Angels rookie Walbert Ureña was superb, tossing six scoreless innings and allowing just four hits while lowering his ERA to 2.70. In the ninth, after Oakland finally got on the board, reliever Chase Silseth pulled off a massive escape by getting hard-hitting Nick Kurtz to bounce into a double play with the bases loaded. That save kept the door just ajar for Neto’s moment of magic.
Credit: Katelyn Mulcahy / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
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