ANAHEIM — In the three most emotional innings of the season, the Angels received two home runs from rookie Christian Moore, all while Zach Neto departed with an injury.
Moore’s second home run of the game ended a 3-2 victory over the Boston Red Sox in 10 innings. It was just two innings after he tied the score by going deep. In between, Neto’s shoulder injury in the ninth still hung over the proceedings.
The heroics were so unexpected, even Moore himself was unsure it even happened. He sprinted around the bases with a dive into third not knowing his line drive to right-center had cleared the wall.
“I didn’t believe it,” Moore said as third-base umpire Chris Segal gave the home run signal. “I was kind of scared to get off the base, but the umpire was pretty serious that it was a home run. So I was, ‘Alright, I’m going to take your word for it and go celebrate with my boys.’”
As of mid-May, Moore was taking his final exams at Tennessee. One year ago, he was helping the Volunteers to the College World Series title. On Tuesday, he helped the Angels find success after the offense struggled against another Tennessee alum in Red Sox left-hander Garrett Crochet.
“I think I saw it on Twitter that a year ago today, we won at Omaha,” Moore said. “So it means the world to me to be here in this situation in a full complete circle. I’m just blessed to be here. The Angels saw something in me in last year’s draft, and they continue to see something in me. And I’m going to keep going out there and try to win games.”
The game-winner came after the Red Sox took a 2-1 lead in the 10th when Marcelo Mayer’s single scored automatic runner Ceddanne Rafaela with left-hander Reid Detmers on the mound.
Neto departed with a right shoulder injury after he bobbled a Romy Gonzalez grounder then fired a weak throw to first base over the head of LaMonte Wade Jr.
With hands on knees at the edge of the infield dirt after the play, Neto was visited by a member of the team’s medical staff before walking off the field. A half-inning earlier, the injury occurred when Neto made the last out on a dive while trying to steal second base as the winning run with Mike Trout at the plate.
The injury happened in a strikingly similar fashion to his dive into second late last season that led to offseason shoulder surgery and delayed his start to this season by three weeks.
“We’ll see what happens,” interim manager Ray Montgomery said. “I don’t have any information at this point other than we weren’t going to let him go out there after that.”
From the top of the order to the bottom, from the veterans of the bunch to the young, it had been the same miserable story all night for the Angels against Crochet.
One night after they collected 11 walks to ignite a 9-5 victory, the Angels added three more walks against Crochet in seven innings but just three hits, while striking out 10 times.
Without Nolan Schanuel, who was given some time off his feet, the Angels’ adjusted top three of Neto, Luis Rengifo and Mike Trout went 2 for 11. The bottom four was in its own slumber until Moore rode to the rescue.
None of the offensive struggles were surprising against Crochet, the American League strikeout leader, who added double digits onto the pile Tuesday. Six Angels players struck out two times each. Red Sox pitchers combined for 15 total strikeouts.
The victory came as the Angels received yet another standout performance from the bullpen as Connor Brogdon, Hunter Strickland, Sam Bachman and Kenley Jansen combined to go 4⅓ scoreless innings. Detmers (3-2) even rebounded after his first pitch allowed the tying run to score.
Jansen was pitching one day after he departed in the ninth inning because of a cramp in his pectoral muscle.
“The bullpen, you can’t say enough about what they did,” Montgomery said.
It came as left-hander Tyler Anderson had a short night, allowing one run over 4⅔ innings, while Montgomery elected to turn the game over to the bullpen with the Red Sox about to start their third time through the batting order.
“Obviously as a starter, you want to go deeper into games there, but man, our bullpen has just been unbelievable, so kudos to those guys for coming in, shutting it down and keeping it there,” Anderson said.
The plan gave the Angels a chance, all while Crochet had other ideas. The Red Sox starter delivered an outing of three runs or less for the 10th time in his last 11 outings, while going at least six scoreless innings for the third time this season.
“I don’t want to say (Crochet) is a former teammate of mine because I never got a chance to play with him, but he is a UT alum so I got to be around him a lot this offseason,” Moore said. “So I know the type of person he is and how hard he works. That guy is good. He did his thing tonight.”
The Angels are now 4-1 against the Red Sox this season and clinched their second series victory over Boston in two tries this month.
Now that the mostly young lineup has faced one of the AL’s best, it is up to them to use that experience to get after the rest the league has to offer.
“I think (Moore) has that youthful exuberance,” Montgomery said. “It’s refreshing in one sense because there is so much energy there. We talked about some of the things that go on and at one point he’s like, ‘Man, I don’t think I’d ever want your job.’ And I said, ‘I’d like to have yours again.’”