by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

LOS ANGELES–This is the time of the year when the Los Angeles Angels start to get hot and jell and they did it this time last year. The Angels were hovering in the .500 range at 33-32 and all of a sudden they caught fire they won 98 games at the end of the season. It’s a wonder if they can do that again. The American League West is going to be a race until the finish.

The Oakland A’s are still in the cellar and if they can fix their bullpen and they’re 11 games out, this western division is certainly exciting and anything can happen. For the A’s to catch up it’s going to be tough because like the Angels their going to have to win three game series like two out of three. The A’s are going to have to win a lot of series to get back into the race.

Once in a while the A’s will have to sweep somebody to get right back into this race. We’ve been saying this all along the bullpen is very weak the A’s could make a run for it but they’re 10.5 games out and in order to get back into it all the stars will have to be aligned. Houston is going to have to go into a slump.

Houston holds a slight 3 game margin lead in the AL West and just lost two out of three over the week. The Astros have a lot of confidence and they have very good pitching. The Astros are more interesting they’re aggressive, they hit the long ball, they get pitching they can come back and string a few victories together.

That’s how they win and the A’s can hope by the end of July they’ll be just three games out but if they’re ten games out by the end of July there’s going to be a big fire sale and A’s general manager Billy Beane is going to trade for some new players. The Astros have one of the best lefthanded pitchers in baseball Dallas Keuchel 8-3 ERA 2.53.

Here’s one of the things as I was talking with one of the Astros broadcasters last night and I asked if they were going to make any trades and the Astros are so talented and it will be tough to decide who to deal. For Houston that’s a wonderful problem to have because they have talented players all throughout their roster.

The Astros were not expected to contend this year and maybe they would contend for 2016 or 2017 so what happened the Astros have guys who can hit, George Springer is hitting .279, Jose Atulve .287, Chris Cater strikes out a lot but hits a lot of home runs and is hitting .201. The Astros have a lot of talent and their in first place.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for the A’s, the Spanish radio voice for the Angels, and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com