ARLINGTON, Texas _ File the Angels' 6-3 loss to the Texas Rangers on Saturday night under the heading: "Baseball is a game of inches."
The four-run fifth inning that flipped the game for the Rangers, and ended the Angels' five-game winning streak, involved three straight hits that were all inches from being caught or foul.
That sequence put the Rangers up 4-2, and then Carlos Gomez padded the lead with a two-run homer, which made him the sixth player ever to hit for the cycle against the Angels. The last was Felix Pie in 2009.
It was Gomez's triple that came during the game's critical fifth inning.
Jesse Chavez took the mound in the fifth with a 2-0 lead, having worked around a couple jams in the first four innings.
With two outs and a runner at second in the fifth, Nomar Mazara lined a single just past the dive of shortstop Andrelton Simmons, driving in one. Gomez then hit a drive to right center. Mike Trout chased it down and got a glove on it with a stretch, but he couldn't hang on. Gomez ended up with a game-tying triple.
Roughned Odor then whacked a drive off the right-field pole, for a two-run homer to put the Rangers on top.
Offensively, the Angels had a couple promising rallies against Rangers' righty Yu Darvish, but they could only parlay them into two runs.
After being held hitless in the first three innings, the Angels scored two runs on a Kole Calhoun single, a Trout double (and an error) and an Albert Pujols sacrifice fly.
The Pujols sac fly came just after he'd contorted himself to avoid a high-and-tight pitch from Darvish. Pujols then jawed at the Rangers dugout.
The Angels had a shot to get more against Darvish in the sixth, when he was clearly laboring. He walked the first two batters of the inning, but the Rangers kept him out there as he approached 110 pitches. He then stayed even after walking the bases loaded with one out.
A hit could have tied the game, and a fly ball could have cut the lead in half, but Simmons popped up and Ben Revere grounded out on Darvish's 125th and final pitch.
