José Soriano dominates as Angels cruise past Braves

Jeff Fletcher, The Orange County Register on Apr 7, 2026

Published in Baseball

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ANAHEIM — Once in a while, everything works out optimally.

Even with the Angels.

José Soriano pitched eight dominant innings and the hitters took advantage of a sloppy Chris Sale in the Angels’ 6-2 victory over the Atlanta Braves on Monday night.

And they did it without two of their best hitters. Mike Trout is out with a bruised hand, and Nolan Schanuel didn’t start against the left-handed Sale. The Angels got home runs from Zach Neto and Jo Adell, the first and last batters that Sale faced.

The Angels (6-5) walked away with their first three-game winning streak of the season.

After squeaking out one-run victories over the Seattle Mariners on Saturday and Sunday – games that taxed the bullpen and stressed their fans – this one was comfortable from the fourth inning.

Soriano allowed one run in eight innings, doing precisely what the Angels needed to allow their relievers to be refreshed after the weekend.

Soriano needed just 97 pitches, including 69 strikes. He didn’t throw more than 16 pitches in any inning. He threw a first-pitch strike to 16 of 26 of the hitters he faced.

Soriano struck out 10 and walked none, an especially impressive feat against a Braves team that came into the game with MLB’s lowest strikeout rate (18%).

“That was pretty insane,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said. “It’s a great lineup over there. They’re not punching out this year and for Sori to come in and do that, I mean, that just speaks about the stuff, but also the execution.”

Braves catcher Drake Baldwin got him by homering on a 98 mph fastball above the zone in the first inning, and then Matt Olson followed with a ground ball single.

One of Soriano’s problems last season was that his outings would go bad quickly because he couldn’t stop the bleeding after a few bad hitters. But the back-to-back hits from Baldwin and Olson did not stop him this time.

“When you see him lose a couple arm-side or up or down or whatever, he gets right back in it and refocuses and starts pounding the zone again,” Suzuki said. “I think his adjustments are quick. That’s what you like to see for sure.”

Soriano erased Olson on a double play, the first of 19 consecutive batters that he retired. That included three straight strikeouts the second time through the heart of the Braves’ order: Baldwin, Olson and Austin Riley.

Three starts into the season, Soriano has an ERA of 0.45, with 21 strikeouts and six walks in 20 innings.

Soriano said he’s felt particularly in sync with catcher Logan O’Hoppe.

“I think it’s because we have, we have more communication, try to be on the same page every time we go out there in the field,” he said. “I think that’s part of the success we’ve been having the last three outings. So I think the more communication we have, I think the better we can be.”

As good as Soriano was, he was only matching Sale for the first three innings. After Neto’s homer (No. 4) on the first pitch of the game, Sale zipped through the next nine hitters in a row, with six strikeouts.

In the fourth, though, Sale uncharacteristically fell apart.

He started the inning by hitting Jorge Soler with an 0-and-2 pitch. Adell followed with a bloop single. Sale then walked Jeimer Candelario and O’Hoppe, pushing home a run to put the Angels ahead 2-1.

After a force out at the plate, Bryce Teodosio hit a grounder in the hole between shortstop and third for an infield hit to drive in another run. Yoán Moncada was then hit by a pitch, driving in the third run of the inning.

By the time the inning ended, the Angels had three runs while hitting only one ball out of the infield.

They padded the lead in more traditional fashion. Adell belted a two-run homer, the first extra-base hit of the season for a player who hit 37 homers last year.

“I hit some balls solid but not as solid as like I’m used to kind of hitting them,” Adell said. “Still with a good approach towards the middle of the field and kind of getting those base hits, but a lot of them were like kind of jam shots and like capping the ball a little bit. It felt good to kind of really get the barrel through and connect on one.”

Adell’s homer ended the night for Sale, who had never lost to the Angels in 11 previous starts.

“He’s a big strikeout pitcher and there’s a lot of swing and miss on all of his stuff and so we were just trying to tunnel the zone and find pitches that we thought we could hit and not try to get too big and laying off a lot of those pitches down in the zone,” Adell said. “Kind of waiting for a pitch that we could hit and obviously the walks crept in, which was good for us. We put that pressure on and got the timely hitting when we needed it and that’s what happens.”