J.C. Ramirez had another solid outing, the Halos had another solid loss, Astros win 5-1

Angels 1 Astros 5

Well, for a bit there, this was another tight contest, where the Halos pitching was keeping things close, and it’d just be up to the lineup to get the job done. For a minute there, it looked like the lineup was going to do just that, because they were getting hits off of Houston’s Dallas Keuchel here and there. It was just a matter of time til they’d break the game open.

The game was broken open, alright. Only it was done by the Astros, mostly by a Josh Reddick home run in the seventh (he was a single shy of the cycle tonight), but also by an Evan Gattis in the sixth. So much for two wins in a row.

Starter J.C. Ramirez was looking studly for awhile, there. He was throwing hard, in the upper 90s, and he was getting Astros out with ease. At one point, he had gotten 10 straight outs, and had struck out five in a row. He went 5.1 IP, and got NINE Ks in those 5.1 innings, but he also had those three earned runs off of six hits.

The Angels would only score one run tonight, thanks to a Yunel Escobar knock off of Keuchel, but that was it. Therefore, those three runs on Ramirez would be enough to sink the Halos. Of course, that didn’t stop Reddick from launching that bomb to right field, off of reliever Mike Morin, making it 5-1, but that’s neither here nor there.

I thought the Angels would take this one. Ramirez looked nice out there, and they got eight hits off of Keuchel, but it only amounted to one run. They went 1-6 with RISP, so if you’re looking for the culprit, there ya go...Albert Pujols and Martin Maldonado being the two biggest offenders in the run support failure category. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any other SNAFUs; there was plenty of wrong to go around tonight.

I guess we can at least be happy that Ramirez, in his 2nd MLB start, looked pretty solid on the mound. That’s a plus. The rest is a step back into the muck. Tomorrow, it wont get easier; quite the opposite. The road is hard, and thankfully, it’s almost over. For now.