![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/jered-weaver-angels-9302.jpg\")
<\/a>Los Angeles certainly had its chances to win Saturday\u2019s contest against Tampa Bay, but closer Fernando Rodney\u2019s wild pitch in the bottom of the 10th sealed the team\u2019s fate in a 2-1 loss.\u00a0 \u201cIt was going to come down to some close plays,\u201d said manager Mike Scioscia.\u00a0 \u201cThere are some things we didn\u2019t do that we could\u2019ve taken possession of and had a little better chance at some points in the game.\u201d\u00a0 The Angels have won six of their last eight road games and lead the American League with nine road wins.\u00a0 The squad is 6-7 at home and 9-5 on the road.\u00a0 Los Angeles is 6-4 in day games this season and 70-39 the past three years.<\/p>\n
Angels starting pitcher Jered Weaver recently became the fifth pitcher since 1900 to end April with at least six victories, coming in with a dominating 6-0 mark and 0.99 ERA.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s not much different that he\u2019s doing now that he didn\u2019t do last year,\u201d Scioscia commented.\u00a0 \u201cOutside the wins and losses, his internal numbers matched up with any Cy Young candidate.\u201d\u00a0 The right-hander is a perfect 4-0 with a 1.24 ERA in four road outings this year, allowing opponents to hit for a dismal .149 average.\u00a0 He will be making his seventh career start versus Tampa Bay, producing a 4-1 record and 2.27 ERA.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay broke a string of four consecutive losses to Los Angeles and are an even 14-14 in the series since 2008.\u00a0 The Rays are 14-4 over their last 18 games, as the pitching staff has carried the team with a 2.86 ERA over that span.\u00a0 Fans should be proud of their team\u2019s accomplishment in becoming the first team to start 0-6 and end April with a winning record.\u00a0 The pitching staff\u2019s starting unit has thrown seven or more innings in 13 of those games.\u00a0 Offensively, the squad may find things difficult in matching up with Weaver, as it is hitting a combined .191 against him.\u00a0 Tampa Bay is 5-6 in day games this season.<\/p>\n
Rays rookie starting pitcher Alex Cobb will be making his career debut this afternoon, coming in with a 3-0 record and 2.05 ERA for Triple-A Durham this season.\u00a0 The former fourth-round draftee has compiled a 32-23 mark and 3.10 ERA during his minor league career, relying on racking up nearly three times as many strikeouts (431) as walks (141).<\/p>\n
Bettors will likely back the Angels due to their 10-1 record in Weaver\u2019s last 11 starts, while the Rays are 3-7 in their last 10 Sunday games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Los Angeles Angels and Tampa Bay Rays have split the first two games of their three-game series heading into the finale Sunday afternoon at Tropicana Field Los Angeles Angels at Tampa Bay Rays Los Angeles certainly had its chances to win Saturday\u2019s contest against Tampa Bay, but closer Fernando Rodney\u2019s wild pitch in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[4904,702,479,150,1574],"class_list":["post-15223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-alex-cobb","tag-jered-weaver","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tropicana-field"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15223"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15225,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15223\/revisions\/15225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}