The Los Angeles Angels have either been really good or really bad with very little in between 11 games into the 2026 season.
11 games into the 2026 Major League Baseball regular season, the Los Angeles Angels have a polarizing team to watch.
The Angels are 6-5 and have been “mid” as the kids say – not great and not horrible – but sit at the top or bottom in most team stats.
Los Angeles has drawn the seventh-most walks as an offense but has issued the third-most walks as a pitching staff. At the same time, the Halos have struck out the most times but are seventh in strikeouts on the other side of the ball. One area that has been an absolute positive has been home runs; the Angels have hit the fifth-most home runs and have allowed the second-fewest, meaning the club can hit and limit with the best of them.
The Angels bat .202 (fourth-worst) with a bottom-10 team OPS (.648), but its pitching has limited opposing offenses to a .214 batting average. There’s surprisingly a lot of good but just about as much bad, but Angels fans can appreciate what they’ve seen from their team thus far.
This team isn’t expected to do much this season, but the players are determined to prove everyone wrong. Perhaps nobody wants to silence the haters more than right-hander José Soriano based on his first three starts.
Soriano dominated the Atlanta Braves on Monday and outdueled future Hall of Fame lefty Chris Sale in Los Angeles’ 6-2 win in the series opener. Soriano allowed a solo home run to 2025 National League Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin on the sixth pitch of the game, but from that point on, he was lights-out.
Soriano threw eight innings and allowed just the one run on three hits while striking out 10. The 27-year-old is now 3-0 with an impressive 0.45 ERA, 0.65 WHIP and 21 strikeouts through 20 innings pitched.
Angels shortstop Zach Neto, the player that said the team wanted to prove doubters wrong, hit a leadoff homer off Sale to even the score at 1. The offense got to Sale in the fourth and fifth innings and tagged him for all six runs on five hits and two walks.
Now Los Angeles turns to lefty Yusei Kikuchi to win the series on Tuesday, but his first two starts fit in the “not great” category. He only allowed two runs against the Houston Astros in his first start, but allowed eight hits and a walk, and the Chicago Cubs rocked him by scoring five runs on six hits and four walks.
Kikuchi was great for the Halos a season ago and was the team’s lone All-Star, but he’s off to a rocky start. He toes the rubber against Braves right-hander Reynaldo Lopez, who has allowed only one run in both of his outings.
Lopez carries a 1.64 ERA and 0.91 WHIP over 11 innings of work, but had just three strikeouts in each appearance, so the Angels might be able to avoid high strikeout totals in this one.
First pitch is at 6:38 p.m. PST on MLB.TV and regional sports networks.