Angels make their pitch to stay in AL West race with 4-1 win over Rangers
A sweep of a weekend series against Texas was the preferred outcome for the Angels, who settled for the next-best thing, winning two of three games when Jered Weaver outdueled Cliff Lee in a showdown of aces Sunday in Angel Stadium.
Weaver (10-7) gave up one unearned run and four hits and struck out seven in seven innings of a 4-1 victory that moved the Angels into second place in the American League West, eight games behind the Rangers.
The largest post-July 31 deficit the Angels have ever overcome to win a division was four games in 2004, so history does not favor them, despite the fact they’ve won five of the last six AL West titles.
But the goal over the next few weeks is not necessarily to catch the Rangers but to get into a position to catch them, because the Angels still have seven games left against Texas, all of them in the final two weeks of the season.
“No one in here has given up,” said Weaver, who increased his major league-leading strikeout total to 162. “I feel like we’re in the race. We’re not in the position we want to be — what are we, eight games back?
“It’s the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve had that kind of deficit. We have some work to do. We’ve got to get some momentum going.”
They’re going to the right place. The Angels open a three-game series Tuesday at Baltimore, which has baseball’s worst record (32-73). After three games in Detroit, the Angels return home for three games against Kansas City, which has the fourth-worst record (45-60) in the league.
After closing their trip with three games at Seattle and three at Oakland, the Rangers, who have been slowed by injuries to Josh Hamilton and Ian Kinsler, will play eight games against the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays.
“These games we’re playing against teams other than Texas are very important,” said center fielder Torii Hunter, who ended an 0-for-15 slump with three singles and a run Sunday. “We have to execute and get the job done.”
The Angels played one of their best overall games in weeks on Sunday, despite third baseman Alberto Callaspo’s sixth-inning error that led to the Rangers’ only run and Juan Rivera’s ill-advised seventh-inning attempt to stretch a bloop single to right into a double; Rivera, perhaps trying to silence critics who have questioned his effort in recent weeks, was thrown out at second.
Weaver escaped a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the third, getting David Murphy to fly to shallow right and Vladimir Guerrero to fly to center, and he got Michael Young to fly to right with runners on second and third to end the seventh.
The Angels bunched four hits in the first to score twice against Lee, Callaspo (single) and Mike Napoli (fielder’s choice) driving in runs, Maicer Izturis contributing a sacrifice bunt and Callaspo going from first to third on Hunter’s single.
Rivera’s run-scoring groundout made it 3-0 in the fourth, and Callaspo’s sprint from first to third on Hunter’s eighth-inning single put him into position to score on Howie Kendrick’s sacrifice fly.
Fernando Rodney retired the side in order in the eighth, shortstop Erick Aybar ranging far behind the second-base bag to field Guerrero’s grounder and throw to first for the out, and closer Brian Fuentes threw a scoreless ninth for his 20th save.
“Outside of one miscue by Alberto, we made plays,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We ran the bases extremely well, played some little ball and got a great game on the mound.”
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