Jose Soriano continued his hot start with 10 strikeouts over seven shutout innings and Oswald Peraza homered to lead the Los Angeles Angels to a 9-6 victory over the host Cincinnati Reds in the rubber-game of their three-game series on Sunday afternoon.
It was the second consecutive start that Soriano (4-0), who allowed two singles and walked three, struck out 10 batters. He left after throwing 106 pitches, 69 for strikes, while lowering his ERA to 0.33, tops in the majors.
Soriano has allowed just nine hits and just one run – a homer by Atlanta catcher Drake Baldwin – in 27 innings this season. He has walked nine and while striking out a major league-leading 31 batters.
Mike Trout went 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, three runs and an RBI and Nolan Schanuel had two hits, two walks and three RBIs for Los Angeles, which won a series in Cincinnati for the first time since 2007. Logan O’Hoppe and Jo Adell each added two hits and an RBI, and Zach Neto walked three times and scored a run for the Angels.
Elly De La Cruz hit a three-run homer and had two hits for Cincinnati, which lost for the fourth time in the last five games. Andrew Abbott (0-2) suffered the loss, allowing seven runs on eight hits in three-plus innings. He walked two and struck out one.
Los Angeles parlayed five singles into three runs in the top of the first inning. Schanuel made it 2-0 with a bases-loaded single to left-center, and O’Hoppe followed with another RBI single.
The Angels extended the lead to 5-0 in the second inning when Neto walked and scored on a double into the left field corner by Trout, who advanced to third on single by Adell. Jorge Soler then drove in Trout with a sacrifice fly.
Peraza led off the fourth with a line-drive homer to left, and Adell added a bases-loaded fielder’s choice to drive in another run to make it 7-0. Peraza drove in another run in the seventh with a groundout, and Schanuel made it 9-0 in the eighth with a bases-loaded walk.
The Reds made things interesting at the end, scoring three runs in the eighth, including two on a bases-loaded wild pitch, and De La Cruz’s two-out, three-run homer to center in the bottom of the ninth.
