ANAHEIM, Calif. — Tuesday’s game at Angel Stadium had a little bit of everything. Multiple Austin Riley hits. A Jonah Heim RBI. A Mike Trout bobblehead for fans.
Oh, and Braves pitcher Reynaldo López and Angels designated hitter Jorge Soler came to fisticuffs in the bottom of the fifth. When the dust settled on it all the Braves had scored six unanswered for a 7-2 victory thus clinching a winning record through the season’s first 13 games with the finale against the Angels scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
Riley, 0-fer in his previous 14 at-bats, tied the game with an RBI single in the fourth and finished 2-for-5 on the night. Heim’s first hit of the season drove in a run later in the inning. And López and Soler threw punches at each other in the fifth before both were tossed.
From there, the Braves’ virtually untouchable bullpen, including closer Raisel Iglesias (S, 2), took over and totaled 4 1/3 scoreless innings, including 2/3 of an inning by Tyler Kinley, who picked up his first win of the season in relief of López.
López’s defense let him down with one out in the first inning when Riley fielded a routine ground ball to third and promptly threw it into the Braves’ dugout. After a fly out to left, Soler took a first-pitch slider and lined it over the short wall in left, giving the Angels a 2-0 lead.
It was Soler’s fifth career homer against López in 23 at-bats and set the tone for later developments.
The Braves got one of those runs back in the second with Eli White’s two-out double into the left field corner that scored Matt Olson who had doubled to the corner in right to start the inning.
Olson scored the Braves’ second run of the night on Riley’s single to right in the fourth. Riley had gone without a hit in his previous 14 at-bats.
“It’s coming. I think, obviously, not the start that I wanted and missing some pitches, but I felt really good in the spring and I think I was trying to do a little too much,” Riley said. “Tonight it was nice to see it go the other way with two strikes there.
Riley went to third on Maurico Dubón’s double to left and then scored on White’s sacrifice fly to center.
Heim, hitless in his first 11 plate appearances of the season, popped a RBI single into no-man’s land in shallow left making it 4-2. All four runs were charged to Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi (0-2) who struck out eight in five innings.
“Especially being the new guy in here, it’s nice to finally get the first one out of the way and hopefully a bunch more to come,” Heim said. “I’m just trying to go out there, help the team win any way I can. At the time, those were pretty big runs, so it felt pretty good.”
The scoreboard still read 4-2 in the bottom of the fifth when all heck broke loose between Soler and Lopez. That meant the end of López’s night after 4 2/3 innings, three hits, two walks, seven strikeouts and one fight. One more out would have given him his second victory of the season.
“That was my entire focus the whole time, really. I knew I was around 80 pitches, so I really was just trying to kind of get out of it and help the team get the win there,” López said via team intrepreter Franco Garcia. “So, yeah, it’s just unfortunate how that situation unfolded.”
Ozzie Albies gave the Braves (7-5), who broke a three-game losing streak, some insurance in the eighth with a solo home run deep to right, his third of the season. Drake Baldwin plated another with an RBI single in the ninth and another run scored on an Olson double-play ball with the bases loaded and no one out.
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