LA Angels (83-75) at Texas (86-72)
When: Thursday, October 1st, 2015
Where: Globe Life Park, Arlington, TX
Time: 8:05 ET
TV: DirecTV 676, 692 Radio: XM 89
Open an Account at Bovada Sportsbook Now! Sign up at Bovada.lv to get up to a $250 Deposit Bonus and to bet all the Web’s best MLB Baseball odds and props!
The Angels of Anaheim begin their final series of the year tonight in Arlington, Texas as they try and bounce back from a tough loss to Oakland last night. The Angels had won 7 in a row before yesterday’s 8-7 loss in which the bullpen and more importantly, the defense failed to hold a 5-3 7th inning lead. The Angels committed 4 errors which led to 7 unearned runs. With the loss, Anaheim sits 3 games back of the Rangers in the A.L. West and a half a game behind Houston for the final Wild Card spot. Now they must put that loss behind them, win this series against Texas, and hope for the best. They’ll have a hot pitcher on the mound tonight in Andrew Heaney. This will be his 18th start this year and he has a 6-3 record and nice 3.29 ERA. In his last 3 starts (all no decisions), he has allowed only 4 runs in 17 innings while striking out 15. He’s faced Texas once this year and won a 13-7 contest allowing only 2 runs in 6 innings.
The Texas Rangers bounced back from 3 straight losses to take the final two games against Detroit. The Rangers are still 2.5 games up on the Astros in the American League West race with 4 games to go. Houston is off today and has 3 games left. The Rangers scored 17 runs in the Detroit series and are averaging 6.4 runs a game in their last nine. Adrian Beltre, Mike Napoli, and Robinson Chirinos homered for Texas last night to give the Rangers 167 homeruns on the season. Derek Holland starts tonight and hopes to rebound four terrible outings to end September. Holland has been knocked around by both Houston and Seattle to the tune of 21 runs in 22 innings covering his last four starts. The start before those four games was against the Angels in Anaheim and he pitched 8 innings of 1-run ball throwing 113 pitches. He and the Rangers are hoping he brings some of that to tonight’s contest.
I’m not liking how Holland has been pitching lately and the Angels are coming in red-hot despite last night’s loss. I can easily see the Angels making this weekend interesting starting with a win tonight.
Pick: Angels +114
