Zach Neto homers again as Angels outlast Royals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For the first time since Aug. 11, the Angels managed to put an ample number of runs on the scoreboard. They scored nine and the high-fives were coming in rapid-fire fashion for a team that needed to give its pitching staff some breathing room for a change.

With the offense doing the heavy lifting, the Angels evened the series against the Kansas City Royals with a 9-5 victory on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium. It snapped the Angels’ three-game losing streak and ended a streak of seven consecutive games in which they had scored three runs or less.

Zach Neto homered for the second consecutive game and there were contributions up and down the lineup as the Angels roared to a 7-2 lead, held off a late Royals flurry and enabled left-hander Tyler Anderson to reach double figures in wins. Anderson (10-11) became the first Angels left-hander to reach at least 10 wins since Hector Santiago in 2016.

“As a starter, you are trying to give your team a chance to win every time,” Anderson said. “It takes offense to do that, so in those (wins) we scored some runs. Wins are a team stat, not an individual stat.”

Anderson had a five-run lead going to the bottom of the seventh. He had worked through a stressful sixth and then sat for a long time as the Angels added two runs in their half of the seventh.

The Royals started the seventh with a bloop hit by Garrett Hampson. The next three batters had authoritative hits and it didn’t take long for the Royals to close within 7-5 and chase Anderson from the game.

“I felt like I just got a little tired,” said Anderson, who was charged with five runs on 12 hits and two walks.

Reliever Hunter Strickland restored order quickly and Jose Quijada and Ben Joyce were strong in the eighth and ninth innings, respectively, to end the Royals’ five-game win streak.

“The toughest outs to get are the last nine and we were able to get them tonight,” Angels manager Ron Washington said.

The big item was that the Angels had enough runs on the board to withstand a Royals surge and hold on. It was a night in which the Angels did a lot of good things at the plate, from Kevin Pillar’s 14-pitch at-bat and eventual sacrifice fly to Jack Lopez’s suicide squeeze bunt that scored Jo Adell in the ninth.

Anthony Rendon, Pillar and Logan O’Hoppe drove in two runs apiece for the Angels, who had lost six of their past seven games. Nolan Schanuel walked three times, and Adell and Lopez each drove in a run.

The Angels chipped away at Royals starter Cole Ragans and then did some serious damage against the Royals’ bullpen.

Schanuel and Pillar led off the fourth with doubles, and Rendon’s sacrifice fly later in the inning gave them a 2-0 lead.

Neto’s tie-breaking homer led off the sixth, and Ragans walked Schanuel and plunked Pillar before departing for the night. O’Hoppe and Rendon greeted James McArthur with run-scoring singles for a 5-2 lead. In the seventh, Pillar added his sacrifice fly and O’Hoppe hit an RBI single to extend the lead to five runs.

“We put together some quality at-bats tonight,” said Neto, who has six home runs in his last 15 games. “Just battling, that’s the big thing that we talk about.”

Neto was happy to see Anderson rewarded with a 10th victory, given how Anderson has been such a model of consistency all season.

“He battled his tail off and has been giving us his all every day during the whole season,” Neto said. “Today, he ran out of gas a little bit at the end, but we were in a good spot.”

Added Washington: “His last couple of outings weren’t TA-like, but tonight was. The long wait may have cost him in the seventh inning, but he did what he had to do. He has done what he had to do all year.”

Washington just hopes Tuesday’s offensive outburst will have a carryover effect as the Angels try to win the series on Wednesday with veteran Johnny Cueto making his Angels debut on the mound.

“It’s always nice when you score runs and we’ve been having trouble doing it,” Washington said of the offensive attack. “Today we got a chance to score them and tomorrow I hope we can continue. … I just want us to be consistent and able to sustain it. Tonight we were able to do that. But I would like to see us come back tomorrow and put those types of at-bats together.”