ANAHEIM, Calif. — It was the right player, at the right moment, the seemingly perfect situation.
With the tying run at second base, the winning run at first and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, “MVP!” chants rained down from the crowd. All 38,201 at Angel Stadium — Angels and Boston Red Sox fans alike — rose to their feet.
With the Angels trailing by one on Monday night, Shohei Ohtani had a chance to win the game.
But this time, there was no storybook finish.
Ohtani hit the ball hard but directly into a shift on the right side of the infield, grounding out to seal the Angels’ 5-4 defeat in their series opener against the Red Sox.
The ending was one of several missed opportunities on Monday for the Angels, who could have taken the lead in the second inning, potentially chipped away in the fifth and maybe even come all the way back from their game-long deficit in the sixth.
But each time, the Red Sox defense delivered, turning three incredible plays to repeatedly stifle the Angels despite their 11 hits and 13 total baserunners.
After the Angels had cut an early two-run Red Sox lead in half in the second, Luis Rengifo hit a deep drive to center that looked like it would leave the yard for a go-ahead two-run homer. But at the last second, center fielder Kiké Hernández jumped up at the wall and brought the ball back, robbing Rengifo to keep the Red Sox in front.
After the Angels, by then trailing 5-1, scored one run in the fifth, Ohtani dumped a single into left with a runner on second and one out. Left fielder Danny Santana, however, made a perfect throw to the plate, setting up a bang-bang play in which the runner, Jose Rojas, was called out after a video review.
And after a leadoff single by Phil Gosselin in the sixth, Max Stassi was thrown out at second base on another flawless throw, this time Hernández negating the seemingly surefire double all the way from the warning track. The next two batters made quick outs to end the inning.
Rojas helped them chip away late, hitting a solo home run in the seventh and before making it a one-run game with an RBI single in the ninth. But Ohtani — who Angels manager Joe Maddon confirmed earlier Monday will both hit and pitch in next week’s All-Star Game — couldn’t complete the comeback.
The Angels (42-42) had dug too deep of a hole early in the game to recover.
José Suarez’s first start of the season lasted only three innings, as the left-hander gave up two runs in a laborious 75-pitch outing.
Moved into the rotation last week in place of Dylan Bundy after impressing with a 1.98 ERA in nine relief appearances this year, Suarez turned Monday’s game over to Bundy to begin the fourth, struggling to avoid walks or put batters away quickly.
After opening the game with two strikeouts, Suarez issued consecutive walks and needed 25 total pitches to escape the first inning.
In a 30-pitch second, he fell behind in the count 2-0 to Christian Arroyo before throwing a fastball over the plate that Arroyo belted for a solo home run. Later in the inning, the Red Sox (54-32) scored another run on a walk and two singles.
Though Suarez managed to strand his fourth walk of the game in the third inning, Maddon let him go no further.
Bundy gave up only one hit in his 1 2/3 innings, but it was a big one: a two-run homer by Rafael Devers in the fourth. Bundy was charged with another unearned run in the fifth after Xander Bogaerts reached on a Rengifo error and later scored on a Santana single.
The Angels bullpen was flawless after that, but the Red Sox defense helped quell each rally the rest of the night — right down to a perfectly placed infield shift at the end.
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