ANAHEIM -- Less than an hour after Major League Baseball announced that Angels slugger Jorge Soler received a seven-game suspension for his role in Tuesday night’s brawl with the Braves, Soler homered in his first at-bat against Atlanta in the second inning on Wednesday.
Soler is appealing the suspension, so he remained in the lineup and started in right field for the Angels. He made the most of it, smacking an 0-1 slider from right-hander Grant Holmes for his third homer of the year. It was a no-doubter, as it left the bat at 105.9 mph and went a Statcast-projected 402 feet to left field.
It was the second homer in as many days for Soler, who went deep off right-hander Reynaldo López in the first inning on Tuesday. He was then hit in the hand by a fastball from López in the third before he took offense to a pitch thrown to the backstop by López in the fifth. Soler stood and stared at López before charging the mound because he said he didn’t like what López said to him.
The two exchanged punches with López keeping the ball in his hand and knocking Soler’s helmet off with a swing. López was also handed a seven-game suspension for his role and is also appealing. The fracas didn’t escalate, as Braves manager Walt Weiss helped tackle Soler while Angels superstar Mike Trout held back López.
Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said he talked to Weiss after Tuesday’s game and again before Wednesday’s game and said there is no animosity between the two clubs. Weiss previously served as the bench coach for the Braves when both Suzuki and Soler played in Atlanta, while Soler and López were also briefly teammates with Atlanta in ‘24.