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<\/a>Kansas City was led by pitcher Bruce Chen starting Saturday\u2019s game with six perfect innings before eventually picking up a 4-2 road victory against the Los Angeles Angels.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll have to get my dictionary out to find a better word than awesome, great, fantastic,\u201d manager Ned Yost said about the start.\u00a0 The Royals have reached the halfway point of the season, going 36-45 through 81 games, after going 35-46 at this point of the year in 2009.\u00a0 Last night\u2019s victory also gave the Royals three straight series victories over the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and Angels.\u00a0 The Royals are going for their first three-game series sweep of the season.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nRoyals starting pitcher Anthony Lerew is 1-1 with a 3.63 ERA in three starts this season (+120), allowing three home runs in 17.1 innings.\u00a0 The right-hander tallied a 3-1 home victory over the White Sox in his last start, allowing just a single run and three hits over six innings.\u00a0 He has made just one start away from Kauffman Stadium in 2010, dropping a 4-3 decision to the Washington Nationals.\u00a0 Lerew has made 17 career big league appearances (eight starts) for the Braves and Royals, but missed portions of the 2007 and 2008 season after having Tommy John surgery.\u00a0 He will be making his first career start against the Angels in front of a national audience.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nLos Angeles has fallen 4.5 games back of the AL West-leading Texas Rangers in dropping the opening games of this series.\u00a0 The club will now seek to avoid being swept for the first time in two months.\u00a0 Ironically enough, Los Angeles has gone 77 consecutive series without being swept at home, with the last instance occurring against today\u2019s opponent.\u00a0 It\u2019s even harder to imagine manager Mike Scioscia\u2019s club getting swept tonight, as the team is 24-13 in games played from Friday-Sunday this year.\u00a0 Outfielder Bobby Abreu and designated hitter Hideki Matsui are the only Angels to have faced today\u2019s starter, going a combined 0-for-4.\u00a0 The Halos are off to a 1-2 start in the month (-220), but are a sensational 39-15 over the last three years in July (+2,120).<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nAngels starting pitcher Joel Pineiro is 8-6 with a 4.23 ERA in 16 starts this season (+540).\u00a0 He has won five straight starts, posting a 2.48 ERA over that span.\u00a0 The three runs he allowed in his last started matched the total from his previous three starts combined.\u00a0 The right-hander is a solid 5-2 with a 2.47 ERA in nine home starts this year, issuing just 14 walks and striking out 40 in 62 innings of work.\u00a0 In 13 career games (nine starts) against the Royals, he is an even 4-4 with a 4.23 ERA (-200).\u00a0 Pineiro\u2019s last loss happened to come in a road start against the Royals, allowing six runs and 10 hits over eight innings.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nDon\u2019t empty the wallet on the Angels tonight on ESPN due to the Royals standing at an even 6-6 as a road underdog of +150 to +175 (+400).\u00a0 The total in those games stands at 8-3 O\/U and 27-23 O\/U in this situation the last three years.\u00a0 The over is also a difficult bet to make, with the Angels being 2-7 O\/U as a home favorite of -150 to -175 on the year.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Angels look to avoid being swept at home for the first time in 77 series tonight in front of a national audience. Kansas City Royals at Los Angeles Angels Kansas City was led by pitcher Bruce Chen starting Saturday\u2019s game with six perfect innings before eventually picking up a 4-2 road victory against the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[2124,1184,2125,1079,2123,38,149],"class_list":["post-5257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-anthony-lerew","tag-bobby-abreu","tag-espn-sunday","tag-hideki-matsui","tag-joel-pineiro","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-new-york-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257","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=5257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5258,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5257\/revisions\/5258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/joel-pineiro-angels-11.jpg\")
<\/a>Kansas City was led by pitcher Bruce Chen starting Saturday\u2019s game with six perfect innings before eventually picking up a 4-2 road victory against the Los Angeles Angels.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll have to get my dictionary out to find a better word than awesome, great, fantastic,\u201d manager Ned Yost said about the start.\u00a0 The Royals have reached the halfway point of the season, going 36-45 through 81 games, after going 35-46 at this point of the year in 2009.\u00a0 Last night\u2019s victory also gave the Royals three straight series victories over the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and Angels.\u00a0 The Royals are going for their first three-game series sweep of the season.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n