Diaz Goes 4-for-5, Houston Erases 3-Run Hole to Top Angels
Yainer Diaz went 4-for-5 with a home run, 3 RBI, and 2 runs scored as Houston rallied from a three-run deficit to beat Los Angeles 7-4. The Angels handed away the lead in the sixth inning with two wild pitches and never recovered.
Los Angeles came out swinging. Vaughn Grissom's first-inning double to left plated two runs, and Jo Adell followed with a single to left that scored Grissom — just like that, the Angels were up 3-0 before Houston had recorded an out in the second. Hayden Wesneski was leaking, and the Angels looked in control. But Diaz had other plans. He launched a 425-foot home run to left center in the second to get Houston on the board, and Jeremy Peña added a 401-foot shot to center in the third to cut it to 3-2. The Astros were chipping, not panicking.
The sixth inning is where this game broke open — and where the Angels broke down. Cam Smith doubled to left, scoring Diaz and Trammell to flip the lead to Houston at 4-3. That double swung the win probability from 58% in LAA's favor all the way down to 29%, a 29-point collapse on a single swing. Then it got worse for Los Angeles: the Angels' reliever uncorked two wild pitches in the same inning, each one gifting Houston an additional run. A three-run lead had turned into a two-run deficit in the span of a few chaotic minutes. That's the story of the night — not Houston's resilience, but Los Angeles's inability to hold what it had.
Diaz kept piling on. He reached on an infield single to first in the seventh, allowing Altuve to score and push the lead to 6-3. The Angels got one back in the eighth on an Adell sacrifice fly, but Houston answered in the ninth when a throwing error by the Angels' third baseman allowed another run to score, making it 7-4 and sealing it. Bryan Abreu threw 1.1 scoreless innings out of the Houston bullpen, and Brent Suter gave the Angels two clean frames — but by then the damage was done. Grayson Rodriguez struck out six in five innings for Los Angeles, which looks like a solid enough outing on paper, but the bullpen couldn't protect the lead he handed them. Houston wins it, 7-4.