Angels follow script from last night, write another win

Angels 3, Astros 0

It was an interesting game. There were a lot of moving pieces, with both teams taking turns to get upset.

The Astros threw out Framber Valdez, who the Angels literally saw last week. Much like last week, when he did not allow a single run to these same Halos, he threw sinker after sinker and either got swings and misses or induced an Angel to beat the ball. Straight. Into. The. Ground. Without fail! The Angels saw him LAST WEEK, and zero adjustments were made. In Valdez’s 5+ innings of work, the Angels hit eight (eight!) ground balls for outs, and the two hits the Angels did have off him were infield grounders for singles.

So naturally, the Astros took him out after five innings and a batter, and similar to Thursday night’s game, the Angels put up a crooked number in the 6th. Kole Calhoun walked, David Fletcher singled him over, Mike Trout sacrifice flied a run in, and a batter later, Andrelton Simmons crushed on into the Crawfish Boxes. 3-0 Halos.

Meanwhile, home plate umpire was having a meltdown behind the plate.

And while umpires have made calls against the Angels this year, I will say that today’s calls did royally screw the Astros. The Angels had bad strikes called against them at the plate, but the Astros had Jose Altuve (twice) and Marwin Gonzalez, and these calls incensed AJ Hinch so much that he came out and got himself tossed. Now, I had to find a way to use this GIF:

But Aaron Boone did get himself tossed today, and the Yankees came back to win. Perhaps Hinch was trying such a strategy?

It would not work. Jaime Barria dealt, throwing six scoreless innings en route to an impressive bounce-back start. The young rookie continued his impressive campaign and would have a shot at Rookie of the Year if not for **certain individuals.

Justin Anderson pitched a perfect seventh, but Ty Buttrey (Note: need nickname for him, my suggestion is CSCS (conjunction Steph Curry shot): please advise) loaded the bases with one out in the eighth. He then threw triple digits to Altuve to strike him out and got Carlos Correa to pop out.

The Angels one-upped the Astros in the 9th by loading them up with zero outs, and they also could not cash in. Blake Parker has recently developed a case of the Justin Andersons, but he was able to throw enough strikes to get the save.

Eh, what the hell. Light it up (figuratively) and be happy. =)