Jose Soriano produced his eighth scoreless appearance of the season while Oswald Peraza homered as the visiting Los Angeles Angels claimed a 3-0 victory over the Houston Astros on Sunday.
Soriano (10-9) survived a wobbly first inning before dominating over his final six frames.
Jeremy Pena (walk) and Yordan Alvarez (single) reached in succession to open the bottom of the first before Soriano induced a fielder’s choice groundout from Jose Altuve. He then recorded strikeouts of Carlos Correa and Jesus Sanchez.
Soriano fanned Christian Walker and Yainer Diaz to open the second, issued a two-out walk to Ramon Urias, and quickly settled into a groove.
Starting with an inning-ending groundout from Jacob Melton in the second, Soriano retired 11 consecutive batters into the bottom of the sixth. Alvarez worked a one-out walk in that frame, but Soriano followed by inducing Altuve to hit into an inning-ending double play, the league-leading 30th double play turned behind Soriano this season.
Soriano, who entered Sunday leading the majors with a 65.6 percent groundball rate, recorded 10 groundball outs. He struck out a pair of batters in the seventh, including Walker, to cap his outing. Soriano allowed one hit and three walks with eight strikeouts over seven innings.
Astros All-Star right-hander Hunter Brown (10-7) matched zeroes with Soriano into the fifth inning before Peraza snapped a scoreless tie with an opposite-field home run into the home bullpen in right-center field. Peraza, whose two-run single snapped a 1-1 deadlock in the ninth inning Saturday, pounced on a first-pitch slider from Brown for his fourth homer this season.
Brown worked around a pair of baserunners in the sixth and allowed one run, three hits and three walks with five strikeouts across six innings. Brown has one win over his last 10 starts.
Mike Trout smacked an RBI double off Astros reliever Lance McCullers Jr. in the Angels’ two-run eighth. Luis Rengifo then brought Trout home on an infield single to McCullers Jr.
Angels left fielder Taylor Ward was carted off in the bottom of that frame after running into the scoreboard in left.
