Bradish Dominates, Mayo Breaks It Open in Baltimore's 6-1 Rout
Kyle Bradish threw 8.0 innings of shutout ball — 9 strikeouts, 1 walk, 0 earned runs — and Baltimore's offense did the rest in a 6-1 win over Los Angeles. Coby Mayo's three-run homer in the fourth inning was the kill shot, swinging the Angels' win probability from 23% all the way down to 9%.
The game was over before it really started. Taylor Ward set the tone immediately, launching a 419-foot homer to center in the first inning to put Baltimore up 1-0. Los Angeles's pitching staff — which cycled through three arms before the fifth inning was done — never found an answer. Brent Suter lasted just 2.0 innings, allowing 3 hits and 1 earned run before handing the ball off to a bullpen that was already in survival mode.
The fourth inning is where this one was decided. With Henderson and Alonso on base, Mayo drove a 368-foot shot to left that made it 4-0 Baltimore and crushed whatever hope the Angels had left. That single swing moved Los Angeles's win probability from 23% to 9% — a 14-point collapse in one at-bat. Baltimore kept piling on: Alonso added a sacrifice fly in the fifth to score Jackson, and in the sixth, a fielder's choice to third scored O'Neill to push the lead to 6-0. The Angels challenged the call on that play and lost. Henderson added a triple to right in the seventh that scored Ward, though the run didn't change the score — Baltimore was already at six. The story of the night, offensively, was depth: Henderson went 3-for-4 with an RBI, Taveras was 2-for-3, and Ward finished 2-for-5 with 2 runs scored. This wasn't one guy carrying the lineup.
Bradish, though, was the real headline. Eight innings, six hits, zero earned runs, nine strikeouts — that's a performance that looks like a pitcher operating at a completely different level than the competition he faced. Jorge Soler's solo homer to left in the ninth — 391 feet — was the only blemish on the Angels' evening, a cosmetic run that made the final 6-1. It's worth noting that Los Angeles is already without Mike Trout, who is on the injured list with a right hamstring injury per ESPN. Whether that absence is weighing on this lineup's ability to generate offense is a fair question to ask, though the Angels' struggles tonight appeared to be a Bradish problem more than anything else.