Trout finally unloads with Monster mash
Slugger hits his first home run at Fenway Park to help the Angels end skid.
BOSTON — Mike Trout has walked to the plate at Fenway Park more than 100 times since making his major league debut eight years ago. He smacked singles and extra-base hits to left field, cranked a ground-rule double to right field and hit a baseball 110 mph only to see it turned into an out.
Trout is arguably the most accomplished hitter of his time. Entering Saturday, his career 1.000 on-baseplus-slugging percentage was the highest of any qualified player who has appeared in the major leagues since 2011.
Yet Fenway’s quirky dimensions and idiosyncratic features had long denied him the pleasure of trotting around the bases after his own home run.
Until the sixth inning of the Angels’ 12-4 skid-breaking win over the Boston Red Sox on Saturday. He smashed a first-pitch heater thrown to him by Boston starter Rick Porcello.
The ball carried and carried, and carried some more, until it cleared the top of the Green Monster in left field and came down somewhere beyond the billboards 428 feet away from home plate.
“I was just trying to get a pitch to hit,” said Trout, who has now homered in all 15 American League ballparks. “He pitched me tough my first two at-bats. I just wanted to get a pitch over the middle and got one.”
Trout said he was aware he hadn’t homered in Fenway, mostly because teammate Kole Calhoun had made a point of teasing him about it.
“I mean, he was going to hit one here before his career was over, right?” Boston manager Alex Cora joked.
The home run was Trout’s American Leagueleading 39th of the season, and the second by the Angels on an afternoon in which they bashed their way to their first win since July 30.
Justin Upton collected four RBIs, including three with a first-inning homer. Eleven Angels batted in the seventh inning as they pummeled the Boston bullpen for seven runs.
The cushion helped the Angels lift the pressure they felt while losing 12 of their 14 previous games and being outscored 63-20 from July 31 to Aug. 9.
“I hope” it does, manager Brad Ausmus said. “You’re not carrying that 800-pound gorilla on your back anymore collectively. Just go back to playing baseball. Not putting as much pressure on yourself in the box.”
Before Trout’s prodigious two-run blast, the Angels clung to a 3-1 lead. They had done nothing since Upton’s homer. Porcello had retired 14 in a row by the end of the fifth inning.
Throughout their eightgame skid, the Angels had not been able to couple good pitching with good hitting. They seemed destined to repeat that cycle after lefthander Andrew Heaney, making his first start since going on the injured list in mid-July, departed the game in the fourth.
He had surrendered only one run in 42⁄3 innings but left runners on the corners for Taylor Cole.
Cole had given up nine runs over two outings before bouncing back with a scoreless inning of work Thursday. He continued to rebound, getting out of Heaney’s jam and posting 12⁄3 scoreless innings Saturday. Adalberto Mejia allowed a run in the sixth, and JC Ramirez allowed two in the seventh. Neither performance altered the outcome.
Ausmus insisted after being routed 16-4 on Friday that the Angels’ woes weren’t rooted in lack of effort. The players were working hard, sticking to the plans laid out for them.
The manager held a meeting with the team the day this nine-game trip started, but otherwise never resorted to reprimanding the Angels. From his vantage point, they seemed to do a good enough job leaving past failures behind. It just snowballed. “It’s kind of like you forget what it feels like to win,” Heaney said.
Saturday, everything finally clicked.
“It was good to see the offense click on all cylinders and get a W,” said Trout, who is two homers shy of tying his career-high and could handily win his first home run title if he keeps up his pace.
Ohtani throws bullpen session
Apparently one of the upsides of throwing 100 mph is being able to easily gauge where you are in rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery.
Angels two-way player Shohei Ohtani threw a highintensity bullpen session at Fenway in front of general manager Billy Eppler and Ausmus. When he returned to the dugout, he was asked to describe how far he has ramped up his pitching.
“I hit 82 mph today,” he said through an interpreter, “So probably 82, 80%.”
Ohtani has a long way to go before he is medically cleared to return to game action. He has not even received clearance to begin working on his breaking pitches. It may be several weeks before he is allowed to face hitters in simulated games.
Nonetheless, the way he let loose in the Fenway bullpen, 10 months after having his elbow surgically repaired, was encouraging.
“He looked easy and free,” Ausmus said. “He threw about 40 pitches, I think. He was good. No complaints, so that’s good.”
Ohtani will get as far as throwing 60 to 75 pitches to hitters before he is shut down for the year.
He will pick back up late in the offseason, just in time to get ready for spring training and the 2020 campaign.