The Los Angeles Angels and Oakland Athletics combined for 16 runs, 18 hits, 10 walks and four home runs in 2 hours 17 minutes of baseball Monday night, with Oakland third baseman Matt Chapman tying his career high with six RBIs.
And then the fifth inning started.
It was that kind of a game in Angel Stadium, a 3-hour, 41-minute slugfest in which the Angels outlasted the A's 10-9 to end Oakland's nine-game win streak.
Mike Trout snapped a 9-9 tie in the eighth when he blasted his second homer of the game and team-high seventh of the season, a solo shot off Yusmeiro Petit that left his bat at 109 mph and traveled 426 feet.
Angels reliever Felix Pena retired the side in order in the eighth, and Ty Buttrey threw a scoreless ninth for the save.
Chapman lined a solo homer to left-center field in the second inning, a two-run blast that traveled 431 feet to center in the third and a three-run triple to the gap in right-center in the fourth, matching the six-RBI game he had in Anaheim on June 30, 2019.
The Angels countered Chapman's brute strength with Anthony Rendon's two-run homer to left in the first inning and Trout's two-run shot to left, a 108-mph drive that traveled 428 feet in the fourth. Trout also singled and scored in each of his first two at-bats.
The A's led 9-7 through four innings and, almost remarkably, neither team scored in the fifth. Perhaps their arms were tired.
The Angels, with reliever Noe Ramirez on the mound, finally got Chapman out in the sixth ... on a 101-mph line drive that shortstop David Fletcher snagged to start a double play. And the A's finally retired Trout when reliever Lou Trivino struck out the Angels star to open the bottom of the sixth.
But the Angels tied the score 9-9 off Trivino in the sixth when Rendon blooped a one-out single to center and Shohei Ohtani drove his fourth homer of the season, a two-run shot to right-center that left his bat at 110 mph and traveled 417 feet.
That the Angels scored seven of their first 10 runs on homers and drew six walks through six innings was hardly a surprise. Entering Monday, the Angels ranked fifth in the major leagues with 24 homers and second with 70 walks, but they were in last place in the American League West with a 5-11 record.
It's almost as if the Angels, who were counting on a highly productive offense to offset some of their pitching deficiencies, are getting too much of a good thing.
Of the 82 runs they've scored this season, 52 of them, or 63.4%, have come on home runs. Only the New York Yankees, who scored 50 of their first 79 runs via the home run, had a higher percentage (63.3%) going into Monday's games. Next on the list is the Cincinnati Reds (55.2%).
"Well, that's just what the game has evolved into _ everybody trying to hit home runs," manager Joe Maddon said on a videoconference call before the game. "Singles aren't cool. Singles are like pennies. They've become obsolete almost.
"It's a mind-set that we have to get the guys back into. I want it all. I want power. I want the ability to hit the base hit the other way with two strikes to score the run. I want the situational (hitting) mind-set. I want everything offensively, and that's what we're going to strive to be."
