Angels 7 Astros 10
It’s too hot for this stuff, man. By “stuff”, I mean this type of baseball game our friends, the Angels, played this evening on the road in Houston. Every time I stepped outside today, I felt like I was instantly being roasted; every second in the sun a miserable, draining experience, every movement labored and sweaty.
The last thing I’d need on a wretched day like this is to watch the Angels get clobbered by the Astros, but the Angels don’t care about what I want so they kindly proceeded to get clobbered, and then some. It was a smidge over three hours of painful Halos action, and three hours I’ll soon forget, with any luck.
Jhoulys Chacin started the game for the Angels, and the telltale signs of a bad loss were all there, laid on the table bare: walking batters, hitting a batter, then giving up a couple run-scoring hits. When Chacin was finally able to get the last out of the first inning, the ‘Stros already had a 3 spot on the Angels.
Chacin would only make it through 2 innings, but not before giving up another three runs. The bullpen would then be tasked for keeping this game within that six run margin of error..and while they didn’t do as poorly as Chacin did in his two innings, they didn’t exactly blow Houston’s doors down, either.
So far, it was all the Astros regulars doing their typical damage: Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, Colby Rasmus, and some others chipping in. Going into the fifth, it was 6-0 and then Altuve hit a 430 ft bomb off of reliever off of Mike Morin. Dang.
In the sixth, the Angels finally got to work with their bats, scoring two runs off a pair of doubles from Albert Pujols and C.J. Cron. The Astros struck right back with a two-run Correa homer off of A.J. Achter. The Angels would continue to fight back, but it ultimately would be too little, too late.
I mean, it LITERALLY was too little, too late, when Gregorio Petit is hitting a freakin’ grand slam in the top of the ninth. It was preceded by some hitting and some walking by Houston, as the boos began to reign down. Then Petit hit his jack to left field, cleared the bases and gave the Angels four runs. But by that time, it was a 10-3 game...salami making it 10-7 and that’s how we’d end up.
Petit gave us a late shot of adrenaline, I like to think it was his gift to us, to try and make the loss go down a bit smoother. It didn’t exactly work, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, Gregorio! In hindsight, those six runs in the first two innings by Chacin seemed like an early dagger in the heart, but the final score will prove otherwise.
If you were a certain type of imaginative fan, you could begin to think of ways the Angels and Mike Scioscia used their pitchers in tonight’s game, and ways in which they come out on top, 7-6. But if you were that type of fan, I’d tell you not to wrack your brain over it, accept the lose. Just like the Angels surely have.
They would find a way to lose, one way or another, but hey...there are still two more to go in Orange Juice field. They can win those, right, and prove that they don’t belong in the cellar of the AL West?