Thanks to its ill-timed three-game slide, Houston has only seven games left to make up a three-game deficit on Baltimore for the final wild-card spot.
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“We want to play spoiler”, C.J. Cron said. “They know it. We know it and we’ll see what happens”. “I think everyone was a bit down with the bad news we had this morning”.
Mike Trout, 25, an outfielder with the Los Angeles Angels and a 2009 Millville High School graduate, was the 2014 American League Most Valuable Player. Cron hit a fly ball to shallow center field that required a diving catch from Jake Marisnick, which in turn enabled Trout to score easily from third base following a Gregerson wild pitch.
Giles was replaced by Michael Feliz after loading the bases with a walk.
“This is not how we drew up the start of this homestand”, Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “For a lot of reasons”.
“We’ve just got to move on and come out tomorrow and win”, George Springer said. The Angels have won three in a row. Giles was saddled with his fifth blown save on Friday night, allowing six runs, three hits and three walks in the ninth inning.
“I just wanted to go out there and put up a zero”, Giles said. It also put an end to a hard weekend, one that featured a blown save on Friday night and a freak injury on Saturday when he took a line drive off his right wrist during early batting practice. “He had the trust and faith in me to do that so I went out there and backed it up”.
Evan Gattis and Kemp launched leadoff home runs in the second and fifth innings, respectively, with Gattis belting his team-leading 31st homer while Kemp recorded the first of his career. Mike Morin took over and Houston got another run home on a passed ball to extend the lead. He gave up three runs on seven hits, including two homers, while striking out four and walking two.
Like Musgrove against Los Angeles, Angels right-hander Daniel Wright (0-4, 7.48 ERA) will make his first career appearance against the Astros. Brad Peacock (0-0, 2.86) is the Astros’ scheduled starter. A third double, this one by Buss with one out, scored Cron to push the lead to 2-0. “So I just have to get better at going out there from the first pitch of each inning and be ready to go”. Musgrove didn’t allow a hit until the sixth inning of his last start, yielding two hits and one run in 5 1/3 innings of a 2-1 win over Oakland. Scioscia added that the next step will be to send him to pitch in their instructional league. Bandy did enter in the ninth inning on Friday night as a defensive replacement. There was no immediate word on his injury. There still isn’t a timetable for his return.
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The top of the 9th had the Angels in full no mercy mode, as they hit a handful of doubles (seriously, they had four doubles in this one inning), and coupled with the assistance of some Astros errors, they would tack on five more runs, and jacked the lead up to 10-4.
