Angels Can't Close as A's End Seven-Game Skid with 9-7 Win

So much for betting on freefall teams to keep falling. The Athletics snapped their seven-game losing streak in dramatic fashion, rallying past the Angels 9-7 in a game that made our -110 Angels pick look foolish by the seventh inning.

Yusei Kikuchi's supposed strikeout advantage? Didn't matter when he couldn't keep runs off the board. The Angels actually jumped ahead early and led for stretches, but Oakland's bats finally woke up after being outscored 6.4 to 2.6 per game during their skid. Turns out desperate teams eventually stop playing desperate. The A's offense cobbled together nine runs against a Los Angeles pitching staff that entered with a 4.21 team ERA—solid on paper, porous when it counted tonight.

Brady Basso wasn't spectacular, but he didn't need to be. Oakland's lineup did enough damage to overcome their own shaky bullpen, and the Angels couldn't manufacture the late-inning magic needed to steal this one back. Los Angeles plated seven runs and still lost, which tells you everything about how their pitching collapsed when the game was there for the taking.

Sometimes the math checks out and the team still doesn't. The Angels had every statistical edge coming in and got bounced anyway. That's baseball—and that's why we're 0-1 on this one.