Walbert Ureña dominates Yankees as Angels snap 7-game skid

Jeff Fletcher, The Orange County Register on Sep 1, 2026

Published in Baseball

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ANAHEIM — If you didn’t know better, you would think the Angels were the team that goes to the postseason every year and the New York Yankees were the ones who have endured more than a decade of losing.

The Angels snapped their seven-game losing streak by thumping the Yankees, 10-1, on Monday night in a game that defied expectation.

The Angels got outstanding starting pitching from Walbert Ureña, clutch hits from throughout the lineup and solid defense, while the Yankees made three errors.

The Angels (53-85) were due for a night like this after suffering through a week of excruciating losses, most of them when starting pitchers delivered but the hitters and relievers didn’t.

In a few of those games, the Angels scored early but failed to keep the offense going. This time, the Angels scored in four straight innings, from the third through the sixth.

Meanwhile, Ureña cruised through arguably the best of his 23 major league starts.

Ureña pitched seven innings for the second time this season, giving up one run. He struck out eight, equaling his season-high, and he didn’t walk anyone.

His performance certainly put to rest any talk that the Angels should shut him down because of his workload in his first full major league season. Those questions arose after he gave up six runs in 8⅔ innings in his previous two starts, including five walks in his last outing.

The only run he allowed was a Spencer Jones homer in the fifth.

Ureña put the final cherry on top of a month in which Angels starters had a major-league best 2.51 ERA. It was their best ERA for any full month since April 1982, when they had a 2.24 ERA.

For most of the month, Angels starters went unrewarded for their good work because the hitters couldn’t score, but they came through on Monday.

In the third, Vaughn Grissom dumped a two-out single into center, driving in one. It was the first of his three hits and four RBIs.

In the fourth, with two outs and the bases empty, Rodriguez hit Oswald Peraza and Tyler Heineman with pitches. That rolled the lineup back to the top, and Zach Neto and Mike Trout followed with consecutive singles, driving in three more runs.

Trout had two hits and Wade Meckler had two hits and two walks.

The Angels also got some of the breaks they haven’t gotten lately. In the fifth, a Christian Moore blooper drove in one, the first of his two hits. Moore then scored from second when the Yankees (78-60) threw a pickoff attempt into center field, making it 6-1.

They got a run in the sixth when Yankees shortstop José Caballero made two errors on one play. With one out and runners at the corners. Caballero got a grounder that should have been an easy double play. He bobbled the ball so he couldn’t step on second base in time for an out, and he then made a bad throw to first.

The Angels also scored three times in the eighth against Yankees closer David Bednar, who was called on for a rare mop-up appearance because he was the freshest pitcher in a tapped bullpen.

The production of the offense and the performance of Ureña allowed the Angels’ overworked bullpen to have a relatively easy night. Tayler Saucedo worked the eighth and Blake Weiman pitched the ninth.

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