ATLANTA (AP) — Austin Riley had a homer and two singles, Kyle Wright won his 12th game to take the NL lead, and the Atlanta Braves kept rolling with a 7-2 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday night.
Riley singled in the first, singled and scored in the third and hit a two-run homer in the fourth off Austin Warren to make it 7-1. Riley, an NL All-Star reserve earlier this week, has a 15-game hitting streak and is batting .439 over his last 20 games.
The defending World Series champion Braves, who moved one-half game behind the New York Mets for the lead in the NL East, are 35-11 since June 1 — the best record in the majors over that span. They are 19-6 at home during the stretch and have outscored opponents 131-78 in those 25 games.
Shohei Ohtani, a two-way All-Star and the 2021 AL MVP, connected with a solo shot off Wright in the fifth, a liner that left his bat at 110 mph, cleared the right-field wall and trimmed the lead to 7-2. The homer was Ohtani’s 20th.
Wright (12-4) has won five straight decisions over a six-start stretch and moved one victory shy of Houston’s Justin Verlander for the major league lead. Wright gave up two runs and seven hits with no walks and eight strikeouts in six innings.
Riley’s homer was his 28th. Atlanta went deep three times on Friday and has 150 homers, most in the NL.
Angels starter Patrick Sandoval (3-6) gave up five runs and eight hits in three innings. He dropped to 0-5 with a 4.95 ERA in his last nine starts.
The Angels have lost 14 of 16 and are a season-worst 16 games under .500.
Atlanta, which improved to 24-9 against left-handed starters, leads the majors with a 43-7 record when scoring first.
The Braves led 2-0 in the first on Dansby Swanson’s single and Travis d’Arnaud’s RBI force out, and 5-0 in the third on…