ANAHEIM, Calif. — Nolan Schanuel played the hero Tuesday night, ripping a walk-off single into shallow center in the 10th inning to score Jo Adell and lift the Los Angeles Angels to a thrilling 2-1 win over the struggling Oakland Athletics.
The clutch hit marked the first walk-off of Schanuel’s young MLB career and capped a tightly contested game that saw dominant pitching from both sides.
Reid Detmers (2-2) held down the A’s in the top of the 10th, striking out two of the three batters he faced and stranding Oakland’s automatic runner to keep the game tied. Hogan Harris (1-1) was tagged with the loss as the A’s dropped their 22nd game in their last 26 outings.
Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the eighth, the Angels turned to Travis d’Arnaud off the bench — and he delivered. On the very first pitch he saw from lefty T.J. McFarland, d’Arnaud launched a game-tying pinch-hit home run to left, his second career pinch-hit blast. His first came in 2021 as a member of the Braves.
The night also featured a dominant performance from Angels starter José Soriano, who carved through Oakland’s lineup with a career-high 12 strikeouts over seven innings. Soriano allowed just two hits and one earned run while walking two. He tossed a personal-best 110 pitches — 71 for strikes — and generated a whopping 22 swings and misses.
Oakland’s Mitch Spence, making only his second start since transitioning from the bullpen, impressed as well. The right-hander threw five scoreless innings, allowing just three hits and striking out four without issuing a walk.
Soriano flirted with a no-hitter into the sixth inning before Brent Rooker broke it up with a sharp RBI double to left-center, narrowly eluding a diving Jo Adell and giving the A’s a brief 1-0 lead.
In a key late-game moment, veteran reliever Hunter Strickland, who joined the Angels on a minor league deal in May, wriggled out of an eighth-inning jam with a runner on second and nobody out. He preserved the 1-1 tie and has now tossed 11 scoreless innings across nine appearances for Los Angeles.
Up Next:
The series wraps up Wednesday as A’s lefty JP Sears (5-5, 5.21 ERA) faces off against Angels right-hander Kyle Hendricks (2-6, 5.34 ERA)
