ANAHEIM — During his media session a couple hours before the Angels game on Sunday, after yet another question about preparation for 2021, Joe Maddon dropped this comment.
“We’re still not out of this thing,” the Angels manager said before his team won its fifth straight game, beating the Houston Astros 9-5.
The Angels overcame an early three-run deficit and broke the tie with four in the eighth, including Jared Walsh’s go-ahead RBI single. Luis Rengifo drove in a run with a bases loaded walk and then Justin Upton drove in two more.
It finished off the Angels first four-game sweep since 2017, and their first of the Astros since 2014.
Although the Angels chances of reaching reaching the postseason are still small enough that it may not be worth considering, they are creeping higher.
The top two teams in each division earn postseason spots, and the Angels (17-25) are now five games behind the second-place Astros (21-19), with 18 games to go. Unfortunately for the Angels, they have no more games against the Astros or even the Seattle Mariners, who are in between the teams.
There still likely aren’t enough games left for them to make up the ground, but things could get slightly more interesting this week, with the Astros playing five games in four days against the first-place Oakland A’s while the Angels have three against the last-place Texas Rangers, starting Tuesday in Arlington.
Asked after the game if the Angels still have a chance, Maddon said: “Of course we do. I’ve been involved in some real dire situations. This week is pretty pertinent. But the most important game of the year is going to be Tuesday, and then the most important game of the year will be Wednesday. We have to reduce it to one day at a time. You hear it all the time, but it’s true. If we are able to do that, you can see something good happening.”
Maddon is further encouraged because the Angels haven’t been merely winning, but they have been winning late against a contender with a winning pedigree, overcoming deficits in the last three victories.
“It’s not about special ways of doing things, it’s about competing, wanting to wanting to win this game a little bit more on this particular day,” Maddon said. “I think that’s what I’m seeing more recently. I’m seeing a higher level of competing on our guys part. And I’m not denigrating what happened before. Just that we’re tuned in a little bit better.”
It would have been easy to pack it in on Sunday after they feel behind 3-0 in the top of the second inning on a day with 106-degree heat at the first pitch.
Jaime Barria gave up a Preston Tucker two-run homer in the first and solo homer by Aledmys Diaz in the second.
After that, though, he did not allow another run through his five innings.
“It’s not always going to be an oil painting,” Maddon said. “You have to settle down. You have to say the last one you give up is the last one they’re going to get. You got to tell yourself that and permit your team a chance to come back. It’s it’s that simple. So he kept doing that.”
He left the game with a 4-3 lead thanks to a three-run third for the Angels, including Anthony Rendon’s two-run homer to tie it. Jo Adell then doubled and scored on a Walsh sacrifice fly.
In the sixth, Taylor Ward tripled and scored on Franklin Barreto’s single to increase the lead to 5-3.
Felix Peña entered in the seventh, though, and had his second straight awful outing, after pitching so well for most of the season that he had ascended to getting closing opportunities.
A day after Peña gave up three runs to blow a two-run lead in the seventh and final inning, he faced three hitters and retired none of them, leaving with the two-run lead gone.
Noe Ramirez picked up the next three outs, stranding two runners, to keep the game tied.
And in the eighth, the Angels exploded for four runs, and then Ty Buttrey pitched a perfect ninth to end it.
“You got to win games like this to really earn the right to move to the next level,” Maddon said. “Because when you when you’re playing a good team, and you get in tight games, you have to believe you’re going to win. And they have to, they have to believe that you can beat them.”
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