Mickey Moniak has big night in Angels’ win over Giants

SAN FRANCISCO — The first two and a half months of the 2024 season have not gone well for Mickey Moniak, but the 26-year-old outfielder is progressively feeling better and better when he steps to the plate.

Moniak extended his modest six-game hitting streak in style by going 3-for-5 — with two doubles and a triple — in Friday’s series-opening 8-6 win over the Giants at Oracle Park, joining Kevin Pillar as the only Angels this season to record three extra-base hits in a game.

Entering the day, Moniak was hitting .179 with a .475 OPS and just six extra-base hits — four doubles and two homers — through his first 52 games. It’s taken him longer than he would have liked to find a groove, but he sees the value in being able to work through a tough stretch at the plate.

“Baseball is weird. It’s a tough game,” Moniak said. “At the end of the day, I’ve had success in this game and I’ve had struggles. I think the ones who stay for a while are the ones who know how to handle the ups and the downs.”

Around the beginning of the Angels’ series against the Astros that began on June 7, Moniak said he, hitting coach Johnny Washington and offensive coordinator Tim Laker discussed how he could shake off a slow start to the season by “getting back to the basics.”

They eventually agreed on three things for Moniak to focus on whenever he steps up to the plate.

“Swing at the right pitches, having a good path and being balanced,” Moniak said. “Just kind of trying to simplify it, for me, is something that is beneficial.”

Moniak’s hitting streak began in the second of that three-game set against Houston, but all of the hits in the first five games of the streak were singles. Friday marked his first game this season with multiple extra-base hits and the fifth such game of his career. All five have come with the Angels.

Moniak’s big night began with a drive to the right-center-field gap in the second inning, which looked to be hit deep enough to score Zach Neto from first. But the ball lodged between the wall and the warning track, leaving Moniak to settle for a ground-rule double instead of an RBI triple. Neto, who had to go back to third base, eventually came home on Michael Stefanic’s single.

The Halos left the bases loaded in the second, something that may have come back to bite them had they not cashed in with a pair of big innings. Moniak had a hand in both, a three-run third and a four-run fourth that his team ended up needing to seal the win.

Taylor Ward led off the third with a walk, then scored on Pillar’s double and an errant throw from Giants right fielder Austin Slater. Logan O’Hoppe walked to put two runners on, and Moniak doubled them home two batters later.

Then in the fourth, following an O’Hoppe RBI double and a two-run blast from Neto, Moniak tripled and scored on Jo Adell’s sacrifice fly to center.

“The things that he’s been working on, it’s coming to fruition now,” manager Ron Washington said of Moniak. “We’re looking for that consistency where you bring it every single day. And we just hope that’s going to happen, because he has something in him. He does have it in him. Now we’ve just got to make sure we continue to get it out of him.”

On the other side of the ball, starter Tyler Anderson battled his command throughout the evening but managed to lock in, holding the Giants to one run across 5 1/3 innings.

“I owe it to the guys who just scored the runs to not have them standing out here the whole time while I’m walking everybody,” said Anderson, who issued five free passes and threw only 59 of his 105 pitches for strikes. “At least give us a chance. … Make them beat us, don’t beat ourselves.”

The Giants made things interesting by scoring five runs against Adam Cimber and Roansy Contreras in the eighth inning, but Carlos Estévez closed the door with a 1-2-3 bottom of the ninth.

“We needed all of those eight runs to win the game,” Moniak said. “It came down to the end, and I think that’s just the beauty of baseball. Guys are picking each other up; offense has a good day, bullpen doesn’t have a day that they would like, and we’re still able to come out with a win.”