Angels pull out the stops in 7-1 victory over Oakland
Reporting from Oakland — The Angels were a work of minimalism Wednesday night, their hit total reaching nine but the scoreboard showing just one run in the sixth inning, when Torii Hunter took matters into his own hands.
And right out of third-base coach Ron Roenicke’s hands.
Hunter, on second base with one out, sped into third on Juan Rivera’s sharp single to center field, and Roenicke, who was filling in for Dino Ebel while the team’s regular third-base coach attended his daughter’s high school graduation, thrust both arms into the air.
Hunter blew right through Roenicke’s stop sign and scored standing up when first baseman Daric Barton cut off Matt Carson’s strong throw from the outfield.
The run sparked a four-run rally that blew open a one-run game and propelled the Angels toward a 7-1 victory over the Oakland Athletics, their 10th win in 12 games.
“I had my head down and saw it late, and I kept running through the stop sign,” said Hunter, who had three hits and a run batted in. “I apologized to Ron. That’s my buddy. I didn’t want to show him up.
“But I was going full speed when I saw him, and I was like, I can’t stop, or my legs would keep running and my upper body would be at third. I didn’t want to blow out or anything.”
After Hunter’s daring dash, which gave the Angels a 2-0 lead, Kevin Frandsen reached on a fielder’s choice, Robb Quinlan hit a run-scoring single, and Erick Aybar blasted a two-run triple to center, one of four hits for the Angels’ leadoff batter, for a 5-0 lead.
That was more than enough support for left-hander Joe Saunders, who needed only 101 pitches to throw his second complete game of the season, allowing one run and seven hits to improve to 5-6 with a 4.35 earned-run average.
Saunders, who was 1-5 with a 7.04 ERA after six starts, is 4-1 with a 2.63 ERA in his last seven starts. He is 11-4 with a 3.50 ERA in 13 career starts against the A’s.
Saunders ran into trouble in the first and seventh innings, when the A’s put the first two runners on.
But he cut through the heart of the order in the first, getting Kurt Suzuki to pop to second, Kevin Kouzmanoff to fly to right and Adam Rosales to ground to short.
After Kouzmanoff singled and Rosales walked to open the seventh, pitching coach Mike Butcher came to the mound. Ryan Sweeney hit the first pitch, grounding into a 6-4-3 double play, and Jake Fox hit a first-pitch grounder to second to end the inning.
“Butch said you’ve got two more pitches to get out of this inning,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “And he did.”
Saunders lost his shutout bid in the ninth, when Barton doubled and scored on Kouzmanoff’s single.
The Angels tacked on an insurance run in the eighth when Rivera hit a solo homer to center, a shot that will probably send Carson onto baseball’s blooper reel. The young center fielder is lucky the play didn’t send him to a hospital.
Carson did not slow as he raced to the warning track, and he slammed full speed into the wall, an absolute face plant. It was almost as if he didn’t know the wall was there.
“He’s still alive, that’s good,” said Hunter, the center fielder who has won nine Gold Gloves. “I’ve been there before. Not on a home run ball; I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. I felt bad for him, but he got back up.”
Several Angels could be seen laughing in the dugout after the play, but after the game, several A’s players, after watching the play again, came out of the video room laughing. Except for Carson, who had an ice pack on his face.
“I tell you what, he was accelerating,” Scioscia said. “He was fortunate. He hit that wall hard.”
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