Ervin Santana Beats Texas on Three Days Rest

Final Score in Arlington: Angels 8, Rangers 4

Ervin Santana pitched seven strong innings on three days rest, allowing 4 ER on 4 Hits, walking one and striking out 2. The Angels bats awoke as five Angels hit homeruns in the hitter-friendly confines of the Texas ballpark:

• Vernon Wells hit a HR off of C.J. Wilson
• Mike Trout hit his first of what will hopefully be many soulcrushing homers in Suburban Dallas
• Bobby Wilson followed Trout with his first homerun of the season.
• Peter Bourjos hit the fourth HR of the game off of CJ which is not a typo for Cy and won't be mistaken for "Young" if he pitches like tonight.
• Howie Kendrick hit a homerun off of Koji Uehara late in the game to give the Angels a four-run cushion.

Uehara was the big deadline trade the Rangers made. That trade worked out for the Angels tonight! Mike Adams was the other big trade the Rangers made at the deadline. He pitched a scoreless inning tonight after having given up the walkoff homer to Mark Trumbo last Thursday after which the team has lost but once. Love those deadline deals!

Santana threw 97 pitches as Rangers batters are notorious glory hogs, swinging for the little league fences in their stat-licious hitter's paradise. But as Jose Mota pointed out, Nolan Ryan threw all of his four no-hitters as an Angel on three days rest.

Scott Downs made his first appearance after a hammy scare and was the Econoline Shut Downs we have come to love. Jordan Walden loaded the bases against one strikeout in 24 pitches and was removed for Hisanori Takahashi. The Soth pushed the right buttons - TaKa my Breath Away Hashi got last night's big bat David Murphy to ground into a game ending double play, earning his 2nd save as an Angel in the process and literally living up the billing of that stat: Game Saved.

Rook V. Vet Notes:

While some Angels fans clamor for rookie replacements in the lineup mike trout cost the team with a big mental error in the fourth inning. He would have had an easy throw to home for the third out of the inning but instead hesitated and threw to 3B, where the runner was safe and the run scored. Had he not hesitated, he would have thrown out the runner at 3B. One hundred percent of the blame though might not be on the rookie as it was intimated, though not captured on tape, that teammates were sending different signals about where to throw the ball.

In the top of the fifth, though, veteran Vernon Wells could have stopped at 3B but ran through on a diving Elvis Andrus stop. The vet was an easy tag out on the basepaths... but just as Trout may have been misled by a teammate on the diamond, Dino Windmill Ebel may have misread the Andrus smothering of the sharp Trout grounder. Vernon also took away a flyball that was clearly the call of CF Peter Bourjos... it coulda been a disaster. But our overpaid dysfunction did get the scoring started with a solo HR, the first big crack in what was the easily permeable armor of All Star Game Losing Pitcher CJ Wilson.

Score: Vets -1 + 1 = 0, Rooks: -1 (Trout) -1 (Walden) +1 = wow... Vets live to fight another day!

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