ANAHEIM, Calif. — Patrick Sandoval couldn’t get Carlos Correa to chase a changeup. He couldn’t tempt Yordan Alvarez to go after a couple sinkers. And he couldn’t put Aledmys Diaz away with a slider.
Twenty pitches into the fourth inning on Friday night, the Angels starter suddenly faced a bases-loaded jam with no outs against the Houston Astros.
And on pitch No. 21, he made perhaps his biggest mistake of the season.
Kyle Tucker hit his first career grand slam off a Sandoval slider above the knees, giving the Astros a lead they wouldn’t relinquish in an eventual 4-1 win in a series-opener at Angel Stadium.
Sandoval wasn’t the only culprit on Friday for the Angels, who mustered just two hits against Astros starter Zack Greinke and failed to complete a late-game rally to drop back under .500 at 58-59.
But the blast Sandoval surrendered to Tucker was the fatal blow, breaking open what had been a scoreless game and sending the left-hander to one of his least effective starts of the season.
It was only the second time in 14 starts this season Sandoval had given up more than three earned runs. After he was removed from the game with two outs in the fifth — he finished with a five-hit, two-walk, three-strikeout stat line — it also became only his second start to last less than five innings.
For most of the year, the 24-year-old’s outings had been defined by his ability to escape danger, to execute critical pitches, to put batters away when given the chance.
Friday’s fourth inning, however, produced a different result.
Correa managed a six-pitch walk, getting ahead 3-and-0 before watching a full-count changeup miss high. Alvarez worked an even longer at-bat, fouling off three-straight 2-and-2 offerings before laying off a couple sinkers in a nine-pitch free pass.
After a mound visit from pitching coach Matt Wise, Sandoval got Diaz into a 2-and-2 count and tried to put him away with a slider. But Diaz got his bat to it, lifting a soft line drive to left that dropped just in front of a couple Angels outfielders.
That brought Tucker to the plate, where he swung at a first-pitch slider. The ball wasn’t in the heart of the zone, but it caught enough of the bottom outside corner for Tucker to hammer it 400 feet.
That was all the scoring in the game until the eighth inning, when the Angels — finally facing someone other than Greinke, who pitched seven shutout innings with seven strikeouts — scratched across one run against reliever Kendall Graveman on a dribbling RBI single from Shohei Ohtani but stranded a couple men in scoring position to end the frame.
In the ninth, closer Ryan Pressly shut the door with a perfect inning, giving the first-place Astros (69-46) their third-straight win.
