Astros knock Jered Weaver around in victory over Angels, 7-2

Eleven times, the Angels have played Houston this season. Not since the first game have they won. The Astros have secured 10 consecutive victories, for reasons of randomness and also for the fact that they are, definitively, a better team than the Angels.

“Well,” Jered Weaver said when asked for the cause of the stretch, “they’re not the only team that we’ve lost to.”

Weaver started Saturday’s game, and took responsibility for the 7-2 loss at Minute Maid Park.

He flatly struggled. In his last start, his fastball reached heights it had not yet this season, regularly reaching 87 mph. Saturday night, he struggled to surpass 84, and his command was absent. He walked the first batter of the game, George Springer, on four pitches. He later remarked that he couldn’t remember when he last did that.

Up after Springer, Marwin Gonzalez slammed a ball deep to center field that Mike Trout corralled, the near-homer a harbinger of what would come. With two Astros on base and two outs in the second inning, Evan Gattis lifted a ball atop Minute Maid Park’s short left-field porch. The 350-foot drive would have been a home run in no more than a few major league ballparks, but it was a three-run home run here.

“You take away that homer, it’s a different game,” Weaver said. “But it was a home run, so what are you going to do? It’s no secret that I need a big park to pitch my game. It’s been the story of my career, really. It’s nothing that I can get frustrated about.”

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The Astros amassed another run on two more hits, a walk and a hit-by-pitch in the third inning. Leading off the fourth, Weaver yielded another home run — this time 420 feet — to Gattis. He faced four more hitters, two of whom doubled, one of whom scored, before the inning was over and his day was done.

Weaver yielded six runs, and in 15 1/3 innings against the Astros this season, they have piled on 16 runs. Asked why he thought that has happened, he smirked.

“Obviously, I don’t have the same [stuff] that I used to,” he said. “That’s first and foremost.”

He continued: “And they’ve become a more patient team, not as free-swinging. They kind of make you work for it, and I had to work my [butt] off out there in the second and third. Just having to work hard those couple innings kind of wore me out a little bit. But I was erratic from the get-go.”

Said Angels Manager Mike Scioscia: “One thing with Jered is he usually makes guys hit the ball, but tonight he just got behind a lot of counts. It looked like he had trouble with his release point.”

Jhoulys Chacin tagged in after the fourth, handling his first work since Monday night, when he bailed out the team with four scoreless innings in relief of the injured Nick Tropeano. This time, he provided four innings of one-run baseball.

The Angels have made it known the 28-year-old Chacin is available for trade, and they are not asking for much. They acquired him two months ago for a 23-year-old left-hander, Adam McCreery, who’s now pitching in relief for Atlanta’s rookie-level affiliate.

“He showed that he has the ability to come out of the bullpen and do what he did last week against Texas,” Scioscia said. “It’s almost like Tim Lincecum. He threw a little harder a couple years ago and is trying to find a balance.”

Lincecum starts Sunday for the Angels, who scored one run apiece in Saturday’s fifth and sixth innings, first on a Ji-Man Choi solo shot and then on singles from Yunel Escobar and Andrelton Simmons that bookended Trout being hit in the arm.

Astros starter Collin McHugh survived an Albert Pujols deep drive early in the game. The Angels struck out 13 times against four Houston pitchers, one day after they struck out 11 times against two. They had entered the series as the least likely team in the sport to strike out.

Follow Pedro Moura on Twitter @pedromoura