The Los Angeles Angels will try to finish their first three-game series sweep of the season on Sunday when they close their 10-game homestand with a contest against the Texas Rangers in Anaheim, Calif.
The Angels, just 8-24 over their past 32 games, followed a 9-6 win over Jacob deGrom in Friday’s series opener with a 5-2 victory against Nathan Eovaldi on Saturday.
A win on Sunday would match the longest winning streak of the season for Los Angeles, which won three games in a row from April 4-6.
You have to go back to Aug. 11-13, 2025, to find the last time the Angels swept a three-game series. The opponent was the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
Left-handers Reid Detmers (1-5, 5.07 ERA) of the Angels and MacKenzie Gore (3-4, 4.78) are the scheduled starters on Sunday.
Detmers is 3-3 with a 4.43 ERA in 16 career appearances (10 starts) against the Rangers, and Gore is 0-1 with a 2.35 ERA in two career starts against the Angels.
On Saturday, Mike Trout hit a two-run homer in the first inning — his 13th homer of the season and the 417th of his illustrious Angels career. It also was the 108th first-inning homer of his career, which ranks seventh all-time. He needs two more to pass Frank Thomas for No. 6 and four to push Ken Griffey Jr. out of the No. 5 spot.
“He usually comes after me, and I was just trying to be aggressive and got a good pitch to hit,” Trout said of Eovaldi, who had allowed just one run in his three previous starts covering a span of 22 innings.
Angels manager Kurt Suzuki was pleased with the first two games of the series.
“It was good team performances the last couple of nights,” he said. “Timely hitting, pitchers making pitches to get out of innings, and the energy is really good. It’s fun to be a part of when you’re doing something like this on a nightly basis. I know it’s only been two nights, (but) it’s a good reminder of how we can play and, when things are going good for us, how good we can be.”
Texas, which fell to 3-5 on its nine-game road trip, left 11 men on base Saturday. The Rangers were 2-11 with runners in scoring position.
“We just left guys on base all night,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “Bases loaded three times. Tough not to get any runs across there.”
The Rangers, already without shortstop Corey Seager and outfielder Wyatt Langford because of injuries, took third baseman Josh Jung out of the game with left- shoulder soreness after he dived for a ground ball by Zach Neto in the third inning. Jung had labrum surgery on the same shoulder in 2022, but he appears to have escaped injury.
“It scared me more than anything because I had that labrum tear in ’22,” Jung said. “I hadn’t had any pain or weird sensation in that area in a while. So it freaked me out a little bit. I think it’s more precautionary. All the tests are negative, so I think I’m all right.”
Gore was removed from his most recent start Monday after one inning at Colorado due to left lat tightness, but an MRI of the area came back negative. He had allowed one run on three hits in eight innings in his previous start, a 7-4 victory over Arizona on May 12.
–Field Level Media
