April 28, 2017

Yunel Escobar, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols hit home runs, and Tyler Skaggs pitched strong 5 innings as the Angels defeated the Rangers 6-3 in Arlington on Friday night.  It was the Halo’s 5th straight victory, and moved them 1 game over .500 on the season.

Escobar went deep on the first pitch of the game to give the Angels a quick 1-0 lead.  The Rangers tied the game in their half of the 1st on a sac fly from Carlos Gomez.

It stayed that way until the 6th inning, when Trout went deep with Kole Calhoun aboard, and the Angels had a 3-1 lead.  However, an RBI double from Elvis Andrus and a Mike Napoli run-scoring single tied the game again 3-3.

In the 8th, the Rangers would not allow Trout to beat them again, intentionally walking the Angels slugger.  That put two on for Pujols, who made the Rangers pay with a 3-run shot.

“We weren’t giving into Trout at all,” Rangers manager Jeff Banister said. “Look, there was a situation there, he had hit the ball hard a couple of times, and we were not going to give in there. Move on to Pujols.”

Deolis Guerra (1-1) got credit for the win, and Jose Alvarez pitched the 9th to get his 1st save of the season.

The only bad news for the Angels was that they lost several players to injury.  CJ Cron fouled a pitch off his foot, and will be placed on the 10-day DL.  The same for Tyler Skaggs, who left after throwing 76 pitches due to an injury in his right oblique.

Game 2 of the 3 game set will be on Saturday night.  Jesse Chavez (2-3; 3.96 ERA) is on the mount for the Angels, while the Rangers will go with Yu Darvish (2-2; 2.91 ERA).