ATLANTA — José Soriano and the Angels rebounded nicely on Thursday night.
The right-hander pitched seven scoreless innings in a 5-1 victory over the Atlanta Braves, which helped him bury the memory of his nightmare outing last week and the team’s disheartening loss a night earlier.
The Angels (43-43) could have swept the Braves if they had held a sixth-inning lead on Wednesday, but they settled for winning the series. They were two outs away from a second shutout when Brock Burke gave up a ninth-inning homer.
Shortstop Zach Neto led the offense with three hits, including a home run. He had been hitless in his first 13 at-bats after injuring his right shoulder on a head-first slide last week.
Center fielder Jo Adell, who has been on fire for more than a month, had three more hits, including an RBI single. First baseman Nolan Schanuel, who has been consistently productive for about six weeks, hit a two-run homer.
Catcher Logan O’Hoppe showed encouraging signs of shaking out of his slump with two hits, both of which had exit velocities over 108 mph.
Eight of the nine starters – all except for Chad Stevens, in his major league debut – reached by a hit or a walk.
Soriano took care of the rest.
Soriano has worked at least six innings while allowing one or zero runs in five of his past seven starts. One of the hiccups interrupting that streak was last Friday’s outing against the Washington Nationals, when he allowed eight runs in four innings.
If there was any concern from that performance, Soriano put it to rest with a dominating outing against the Braves.
Soriano struck out seven and he walked two. As usual, he got 10 of his 21 outs on the ground, leaving just four in the air.
The Braves did not have multiple runners in any of his seven innings, and they never got a runner to second base.
Interim manager Ray Montgomery, who has shown a relatively quick hook on his starters early in his tenure, could comfortably let Soriano go because the hitters provided him a cushion.
Neto got things started with a leadoff single, which was his first hit in a week. He was out of the starting lineup for four games, limiting him to pinch-hitting duty, and then he’d gone 0 for 9 in the first two games in Atlanta.
Before the game, he said he felt his bat was coming around, despite the mini-slump.
“Those four days off definitely knocked me back a couple of days,” Neto said, “but I feel like I’m back on track again and starting to feel like myself.”
Neto doubled off the center field fence in the second inning and he hit one over the fence in right center in the fourth. He had two more at-bats to try to get the triple he needed to hit for the cycle, but he hit a dribbler to the pitcher and struck out.
Neto also stole a base, sliding feet first. He said he’s going to try to change to that style of sliding, because he’s been hurt twice going head-first.
More to come on this story.