ANAHEIM — The biggest attractions of Monday night’s Angels-Yankees game — an 8-7 win for the Angels — certainly left their fingerprints all over it, but for majorly different reasons.
Shohei Ohtani, the only thing worth watching on the Angels right now, incinerated a ball to put the Angels ahead in the bottom of the fifth. That was one inning after Corey Kluber, making his much-anticipated return to the Yankees’ rotation, gave up five runs, striking out Ohtani twice but getting pounded by the rest of the lineup.
Kluber’s horror show of a fourth inning included three straight singles, a sac fly to the deepest part of the park, a crucial two-out walk, and a punishing grand slam. It was the first slam of Angels infielder Jack Mayfield’s career, and the one that most directly contributed to the Yankees’ third straight loss.
Kluber had been on top of his game for the first three innings, even striking out Ohtani the first two times they faced off. In fact, Kluber had five strikeouts through the first three innings, mixing in swinging strikes with well-placed pitches that left hitters frozen in their cleats. Something shifted the second time he went through the order though. Kluber got only two more outs after hanging a backwards K on Ohtani to start the fourth. He left his not-so-triumphant return with the Yankees losing 5-2 to a bad team.
Aaron Boone’s plan of having Kluber (hopefully) give the Yankees a few clean innings before giving way to Andrew Heaney did not go well on either end. Heaney did come in as scheduled to piggyback off the veteran righthander, but he served up a home run to Ohtani home run and later an RBI triple to Juan Lagares.
Heaney’s tough go came in his first relief appearance since his rookie season in 2014. In a cruel twist of fate by the baseball gods, the first batter he faced was Ohtani. The third pitch of Heaney’s doomed relief outing wound up 431 feet away.
Even crueler, Ohtani was the first batter Heaney had to face in his return to Anaheim. The Angels traded the left-handed pitcher to the Yankees in July and Angel Stadium greeted him back with a tribute video in the first inning. They should start making another one to honor the win he helped give the Angels on Monday.
The Yankees put relentless pressure on the Angels each time they fell behind, coming back from two separate deficits of at least two runs.
The first came from some small ball to make up for Mayfield’s grand slam. Brett Gardner’s walk set the table for four straight singles that tied things in the fifth. After Heaney’s neck recovered from watching Ohtani’s ball soar deep into the night, he watched again as Aaron Judge couldn’t track down Lagares’ fly ball to the right field fence. That became a triple that made the score 7-5, but Giancarlo Stanton made sure the Halos’ lead wouldn’t last long. His 457-foot bomb off the rocks in dead center was his fifth homer in seven games and ninth homer in August.
Giancarlo Stanton's HR was hit 115.2 MPH.
From there it was a battle of the bullpens, something that should have favored the Yankees. Coming into the game, the Angels’ relief corps had been worth a combined 2.3 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs. At 6.3, the Yankees’ is second-best in the league, behind only the unkillable Tampa Bay Rays.
Clay Holmes has not been part of the Yankees’ pen for long though, and he ended up being the one to wave the winning run home in the bottom of the eighth. Lagares came through again with another big hit, as his RBI single off Holmes sunk the Yankees in the eighth inning for the second night in a row.
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