Angels go deep thrice to sink Rangers

The Rangers aren’t the only team that can homer. The Angels hit three homers that accounted for all of their runs to take the series opener against the Rangers 6-3 Friday night at Globe Life Parik.

How the Rangers pitchers fared: Nick Martinez struck out seven and held the Angels to five hits, but among them were two home runs, over six innings. Yunel Escobar homered on Martinez’s first pitch and Mike Trout’s two-run homer in the sixth gave the Angels a 3-1 lead.

Tony Barnette pitched a scoreless seventh and was replaced by Jeremy Jeffress, who start the eighth. Jeffress retired his first batter but then allowed a single to Kole Calhoun and a walk to Trout before giving up a three-run homer to Albert Pujols and a 6-3 Angels lead. Sam Dyson pitched a scoreless ninth. Jeffress took the loss to drop to 0-2.

How the Rangers hitters fared: Delino DeShields and Elvis Andrus started the first with singles and DeShields scored on a sacrifice fly to shallow left-center field by Carlos Gomez to tie it at 1-1. In the sixth, DeShields singled and Andrus drove him in with a blooper to center. Andrus legged out a double on the play when nobody was covering second base. With two outs, Mike Napoli tied it at 3-3 with a run-scoring single to left.

Notables: Martinez tied his career-high of seven strikeouts. He also did it Aug. 20, 2014 in Miami ... Angels’ starter Tyler Skaggs left the game with right side tightness ... Dyson saw action for the first time since April 16.

This story was originally published April 28, 2017 at 10:22 PM with the headline "Angels go deep thrice to sink Rangers."