ANAHEIM — The MVP showdown between Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge lived up to its billing.
A night after Judge put away a New York Yankees victory with a three-run homer, Ohtani delivered a three-run blast to give the Angels the lead in their 3-2 victory on Wednesday night before a sellout crowd of 43,555 at Angel Stadium.
Both players homered on Monday night, but Ohtani’s homer was a two-run blast and Judge hit a solo homer, so the Angels won by a run.
“It was going to come down to that,” Manager Phil Nevin said. “A game like this with these fans and the way the stadium was, one of the stars just rising right there.”
Ohtani’s 30th homer of the season added a line to his resume as he tried to defend his MVP award. The race between Ohtani and Judge has been on everyone’s mind with the two squaring off this week. Ohtani admitted he’s been thinking about it too.
“Definitely it leads to motivation for me to do better, trying to go for that hardware,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “It’s something I think about. For the most part, I just take it game by game, at-bat by at-bat. At the end of the day, we’ll count it all up.”
Ohtani’s MVP chase is the most intriguing race the Angels have to think about now that they’re out of the race for the postseason, but their performance against contenders in the past week has nonetheless been encouraging. They took two of three from the Yankees after sweeping the Toronto Blue Jays in a three-game series. It’s the best baseball the Angels have played since before their season went to pieces with a 14-game losing streak in early June.
The latest victory certainly wasn’t created solely by Ohtani, even though he drove in all of their runs with one swing. Patrick Sandoval pitched seven dominant innings, and then José Quijada and Jimmy Herget worked the final two. Herget walked Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in the ninth before retiring the next three to end it.
The Angels were trailing the Yankees, and ace Gerrit Cole, 2-0 in the sixth. David Fletcher opened the inning with an infield single, and he took second on a bad throw by third baseman Josh Donaldson. Mike Trout then hit a routine grounder to shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who booted it.
Cole then fell behind Ohtani, 2-and-0, and he grooved a 97.9 mph fastball right over the heart of the plate.
Ohtani hammered it to straightaway center, and then he stood and admired the shot as it sailed into trees beyond the center field fence. The ball traveled 427 feet and left his bat at 107.3 mph.
Ohtani had barely missed a two-run homer in the first when center fielder Aaron Hicks robbed him with a leaping catch at the fence.
After Ohtani’s homer put the Angels ahead, Sandoval then returned to the mound and pitched a 1-2-3 shutdown inning, completing a brilliant seven-inning performance in a matchup of former Orange County high school pitching stars.
“Best stuff I’ve had all year,” Sandoval said. “The fastball was there and everything else played well off it.”
Sandoval gave up two runs on three hits, with two walks and seven strikeouts. He needed just 82 pitches. Sandoval mostly breezed through the Yankees’ lineup, with just a fifth-inning hiccup that wasn’t entirely his fault.
Through the first four, Sandoval struck out six and faced just one hitter over the minimum. Sandoval needed just 44 pitches to get through four, and an astounding 52% of them were swings and misses or called strikes. In the third inning, Sandoval struck out Andrew Benintendi, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on 11 pitches.
In the fifth, Donaldson led off with a chopper down the third base line. Matt Duffy went to backhand the ball and it skipped under his glove, as Donaldson went into second with a double. Gleyber Torres then hit a fly ball to right center. Mike Trout didn’t get a good jump on the ball, and it landed just a few feet away from him, for a run-scoring double.
Neither play was routine, but both were makable.
The Yankees scored the second run of the inning when Torres scored on a deep fly ball from Hicks.
Sandoval then tacked on two more scoreless innings.
“Two months ago, a month ago, that fifth inning would have unraveled big time on him,” Nevin said. “But he stayed focused, and then even coming out for the sixth, it showed me a lot. He’s maturing right in front of our eyes. A young guy with that stuff. It was a heck of a game for him.”
Sandoval said he also had to give some credit to Ohtani for how he pitched.
“The home run helped a lot, brought a lot of energy for me personally, the dugout as well,” Sandoval said. “The guy brings a lot of value to this team. It’s ridiculous. His ERA is like 2-something (2.67) and he hit 30 bombs. Yeah, the guy’s a unicorn. It’s insane.”
Ohtani’s 30th HR pic.twitter.com/fVpRMwWY8Q
— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) September 1, 2022
shohei kills us ???? pic.twitter.com/H8unfhiucI
— Cut4 (@Cut4) September 1, 2022
Sandoval strikes out the side ????
A 1, 2, 3, Fourth#GoHalos | @Angels pic.twitter.com/uBRu6bEezs— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) September 1, 2022
When you see Shohei Ohtani do some Shohei Ohtani stuff: #GoHalos | @Angels pic.twitter.com/7aOMYLSYcr
— Bally Sports West (@BallySportWest) September 1, 2022
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