Angels Hammer Three Third-Inning Homers, Bury Boston 6-4
Los Angeles scored six runs before Boston could answer, building a lead so large that three late home runs from the Red Sox only made the final score look respectable. The Angels sent four home runs over the wall and got six innings of serviceable work from Ryan Johnson to walk out of Boston with a 6-4 win.
The game turned — and turned hard — in the third inning. Zach Neto launched a 375-foot shot to left that scored Peraza and Guzman, pushing the Angels to a 3-0 lead and swinging Boston's win probability from 54% all the way down to 32%, a 22-point collapse on a single swing. Before the inning was even over, Jose Siri followed with a 382-foot homer to right center, scoring Trout and making it 5-0. Jake Bennett was getting hit everywhere, and the Angels were not letting up.
Guzman put the finishing touch on the offensive explosion with a solo shot to left center — 381 feet — in the fourth, pushing the lead to 6-0. At that point, the story of the night was already written: Guzman went 3-for-4 with a homer, an RBI, and two runs scored; Neto finished 2-for-3 with three RBI; Siri added two RBI of his own. Bennett absorbed the damage, lasting 5.1 innings and allowing 9 hits and 6 earned runs. Wyatt Olds came on and cleaned things up with 1.2 scoreless innings, but the deficit was already insurmountable. Ryan Johnson, meanwhile, gave the Angels exactly what they needed — six innings, five hits, three earned runs, five strikeouts — and Samy Natera Jr. closed it out with a clean inning of relief.
Boston's response looked more like pride than a genuine comeback. Roman Anthony crushed a 418-foot shot to right in the fifth — a two-run blast that scored Duran — and Wilyer Abreu added a 408-foot solo homer to center in the sixth to make it 6-3. Duran crossed the plate again in the ninth on a single to right, finishing the scoring at 6-4. Duran himself went 2-for-3 with two runs scored and appears to have been the one Red Sox hitter who consistently found ways to get on base. But Boston's offense woke up four innings too late. The Angels never needed to adjust after the third, and that looks like the difference between a team that came ready to play and one that spent the first half of the game trying to find its footing.