Is UCLA ready for its encore?
The second of his two home runs beats the White Sox after the Angels get a scare.
After a riveting run to the Final Four, the Bruins’ success next season will be contingent on who returns.
Jared Walsh’s three-run homer — his second homer of the night — in the ninth lifts the Angels 7-4.
The inning was over, then it wasn’t. The crowd was raucous, then fell silent. The danger should have been averted, but it was only beginning.
Pitching and hitting in the same game on Sunday for the first time in his MLB career, Shohei Ohtani’s historic night was shaping up to be nearly flawless. He had clobbered a home run in his first at-bat. He had fired nine 100-mph fastballs on the mound. And he had held the Chicago White Sox scoreless through four innings.
But then with one crazy, chaotic, confounding play, it ended with a frightful thud.
With two on and two outs in the top of the fifth inning, and Ohtani trying to keep a two-run lead intact, the twoway sensation delivered a full-count splitter just inside the plate.
With a mighty left-handed swing, Yoán Moncada whiffed for strike three, then turned around to see that Angels catcher Max Stassi had let the ball get away.
What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion: Stassi spiking his throw to first, allowing Moncada to reach safely and the lead baserunner to score.
Second baseman David Fletcher, backing up the play, firing the loose ball back toward home. Ohtani, covering the plate, jumping to reach for Fletcher’s high toss. Abreu, barreling down the third base line, sliding into Ohtani’s legs and leaving the 6-foot-4 right-hander lying on the ground in pain.
The Angels went on to win 7-4, with Jared Walsh delivering a three-run walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth.
But perhaps the best news for the Angels: Ohtani walked away from the collision feeling “fine as of now,” he said through his interpreter postgame, adding: “It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
According to the team, Ohtani simply had some general soreness and will be reevaluated on Monday. The club also said Ohtani, who at the end of the game came rushing out of the dugout with the rest of his teammates to celebrate Walsh’s walk-off, wasn’t removed from the game for injury purposes but instead just as part of a normal pitching change after the manic fifthinning sequence.
It was the only blemish on an otherwise dazzling night for Ohtani, 26, who finished his 42⁄3-inning pitching outing with three runs (one earned), two hits, five walks and seven strikeouts, further stoking optimism that he can flourish in his return to full-time two-way duties.
At the plate, Ohtani swung at the first pitch he saw in his first at-bat, crushing a fastball from White Sox right-hander Dylan Cease into the right-field seats. According to MLB’s Statcast system, the solo blast had an exit velocity of 115.2 mph and traveled a projected 451 feet.
The pure sound of the bat alone brought the 12,396 fans in attendance at Angel Stadium immediately to their feet.
On the mound, he mowed through the White Sox order the first time through. In the first, he worked around a walk. In the second, he retired the side in order with two strikeouts. And in the third, he stranded a leadoff single.
Ohtani’s command did begin to waver in the fourth, when he walked two batters and only escaped unscathed thanks to a two-out strikeout, and then especially in the fifth, an inning that began with the Angels leading 3-0.
After Leury Garcia beat out a potential inning-ending double play at first base, Ohtani walked Adam Eaton and Abreu back to back to load the bases. Maddon had two pitchers warming in the bullpen, but elected to let Ohtani face the left-handed Moncada.
Ohtani’s first pitch of the at-bat went to the backstop, allowing Garcia to score and the other baserunners to advance to second and third.
After that though, he battled back, getting his seventh strikeout of the night with the full-count splitter only to watch the ball get away from Stassi, setting into motion a game-tying sequence that ended with the eventual home plate clash.
“It was a little scary seeing Sho on the ground,” said Walsh, the first baseman. “But thankfully it seems like he’s OK.”
Walsh ensured Ohtani’s contributions didn’t go to waste. In the bottom of the fifth, he put the Angels back in front with a solo home run to right.
Then, after closer Raisel Iglesias yielded a tying run in the top of the ninth with an errant throw to third base, Walsh ended the game with his walk-off blast to center.