ANAHEIM -- Take a deep breath, Angels fans. The seven-game losing streak is finally over.
And the bullpen came through this time in a big way with Sam Bachman recording five critical outs and Ryan Zeferjahn getting six more to set the stage for a walk-off RBI single from Oswald Peraza in a much-needed 4-3 win over the Mets in 10 innings on Saturday night at Angel Stadium. It was just the club’s second victory over its last 13 games.
Angels manager Kurt Suzuki couldn’t help but smile and let out a sigh of relief before starting his postgame press conference.
“What a battle,” Suzuki said. “I guess no other way to do it than a walk-off. I mean, it hasn't been easy, so just really proud of them. They grinded, they battled, Reid [Detmers] pitched his butt off, Bach came in and stopped the bleeding and Zef was awesome. We faced good pitching tonight and we kept having good at-bats and good at-bats and finally pulling off was awesome.”
Peraza was the hero, as he came through with two outs in the 10th despite being down, 0-2, in the count against former Angels reliever Austin Warren. Peraza dropped in an RBI single after Josh Lowe and Vaughn Grissom couldn’t come through with the bases loaded.
It was the first career walk-off hit for Peraza, who made sure the Angels capitalized despite being down to their last strike.
“It feels amazing,” Peraza said. “We needed that win. I was looking for a good pitch to hit and see the ball, hit the ball, and I feel so happy for the win.”
With the Angels clinging to a two-run lead in the seventh, they stuck with Detmers, who had allowed one run over six innings and was at 80 pitches. But Detmers gave up a leadoff double to Mark Vientos and a single to Marcus Semien to open the inning. He then gave up a sacrifice fly to Andy Ibáñez before Tyrone Taylor tied the game with a one-out single.
After Detmers surrendered a pair of infield singles, the Angels turned to Bachman with the bases loaded and one out. Detmers hadn’t allowed any hard contact in the inning but was up to 95 pitches.
“The seventh inning was tough,” Detmers said. “They started swinging at a lot of first pitches, a lot of soft contact, but other than that, it was good overall.”
Bachman was able to get out of the jam by getting Bo Bichette to ground out to third with Peraza firing home for the second out before Bachman struck out Juan Soto on a slider to escape the jam. He went back out for the eighth and fired a 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts before handing it over to Zeferjahn, who threw a perfect ninth.
“I just executed my best stuff,” Bachman said. “In those situations you just come in, pound the zone. Got a huge strikeout there. It also just feels good to help out our starters, too.”
But the Angels couldn’t score in the bottom of the frame despite a one-out double from Yoán Moncada, and Zeferjahn was brought back out to pitch the 10th despite his struggles in multi-inning stints this year.
Zeferjahn, though, was able to get through a scoreless 10th, despite Brett Baty reaching on catcher interference to open the frame. It helped set up a ground-ball double play from Bichette before Zeferjahn got Francisco Alvarez to pop out to second after intentionally walking Soto.
“That was really nice,” Zeferjahn said. “Especially in those big spots, I want the ball whenever my name's called. I was going out there until we won the game, and it’s big to have some success in those scenarios now and get some confidence going forward. I know I can do one inning, two innings, whatever they need.”
As Zeferjahn noted, the Angels had nobody warming up for the 11th inning, so he would’ve gone back out for a third frame if they didn’t score. But Peraza made sure it didn’t happen and gave the Angels some momentum heading into Sunday’s series finale before they host the White Sox for three games starting on Monday.
“It's like a little bit of relief and excitement,” Zeferjahn said. “I'm a pretty chill guy, but we've been grinding every day, and now we have that weight off our backs. We still have fun every day, but now let’s get on a roll the other way and get a few wins in a row, have some fun.”