Angels: They batter Royals with five home runs.
ANAHEIM » Andrew Heaney walked off the mound to the kind of ovation that Angels starting pitchers have not heard nearly enough in recent years.
Heaney pitched into the seventh inning in the Angels’ 8-1 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday night, which also included a 470-foot home run that was the longest of Shohei Ohtani’s career.
It was one of five Angels homers, the most they hit in a game since 2019.
Winners of seven of their last 10 games, the Angels (29-32) are within three games of .500 for the first time since May 11.
Improved starting pitching has keyed the turnaround, with Heaney now stacking strong performances back-to-back. After allowing one run in 6 2/3 innings on Tuesday, Heaney has allowed two runs in 13 innings in his last two starts.
The common thread has been his fastball. Heaney threw fastballs with 75% of his 109 pitches on Tuesday, after throwing 73% fastballs last week.
Those are his two highest fastball percentages since 2015.
He threw his fastball 56.5% of the time in this season’s starts prior to the last two.
Heaney got 14 called strikes and 18 whiffs on his 82 fastballs, an impressive 39%.
Facing a lineup with nine players swinging from the right side, Heaney worked out of two tight spots, in the second and fifth. He walked the first two hitters of the seventh but got out of with a double play and a strikeout. In the fifth, he allowed back-to-back two-out singles, but then he struck out Whit Merrifield.
He didn’t give up a run until the seventh, when he allowed an infield hit and then a twoout double to Hanser Alberto, ending his night.
At that point, the bullpen had a five-run lead thanks to the Angels’ homer barrage.
Ohtani got it started with a first-inning blast to right-center, his 17th homer of the season. It surpassed the 451-foot homer on April 4 that had been Ohtani’s previous longest.
Since Statcast began tracking such things in 2015, the only Angels player to hit a longer homer is Mike Trout, who hit four more than 470 feet. His longest is 486 feet.
Max Stassi, who was bumped up to the cleanup spot, also hit a two-run homer for the second game in a row.
Justin Upton and José Iglesias each hit solo homers, putting the Angels up 6-0 in the fourth inning.
Taylor Ward added a two-run homer in the eighth inning.