Albert Pujols has season-high 4 RBIs as Angels beat Rangers

ARLINGTON, Texas — Maybe it helped Saturday night that Angels designated hitter Albert Pujols and pinch-hitter Shohei Ohtani didn’t have to play on the muddy infield or in the squishy outfield after a lengthy rain delay against the Rangers. All they had to do was hit and get on base — and that’s all they did in their 11-7 victory at Globe Life Park.

Pujols had four RBIs in his first four at-bats, including a solo homer in the second. Ohtani, getting a break from DHing but pinch-hitting in the seventh, broke a 6-6 tie with a game-changing, three-run homer deep to center.

“We drove the ball well tonight, and we needed it,” manager Mike Scioscia said. “Our guys really stepped up. It was sloppy conditions out there — you guys saw the outfield, we were a little afraid out there with some guys. But they kept playing, and they played through it and we really got some big hits.”

Ohtani is the usual DH these days for the Angels, starting each of the last seven games there, and Pujols typically plays first. Ohtani got a planned night off from starting Saturday, partly because the Angels were facing left-handed starter Martin Perez, but also because the move allowed the two-way rookie to rest after throwing a bullpen session before the game. And it gave the 38-year-old Pujols a day off his feet.

When it was Ohtani’s turn to hit, for catcher Rene Rivera, he ripped a 2-1, 94-mph fastball way up in the zone from right-handed reliever Eddie Butler, smashing it 410 feet.

“Shohei coming off the bench, that’s a huge hit at the time,” Scioscia said. “I think we had some spots, we wanted to look for the best situation for Shohei and it just happened to come up when Rene was going to hit. But there were some things that we were looking at. It was a good spot for him.”

Before the game was scheduled to start, a 100-degree day suddenly devolved into ferocious thunderstorms that dumped sheets of rain on the area, creating pools in the outfield and fountains streaming from the upper decks. Then, after waiting more than two hours to start, the teams began a game that was nearly as messy and unpredictable as the North Texas weather.

After a brief lull before the game started, the downpour resumed and continued for much of the game. The grounds crew did its level best to make the field suitable for play, but at least once, Scioscia conferred with umpires on the field and the crew went to work fixing an apparent issue in left field.

“It was steady … it didn’t get clear until maybe the seventh,” Scioscia said. “The thing that I felt was dangerous was the fact of the water in the outfield. It looked like it drained but it was still very wet out there. That’s something I think hopefully that we can make better decisions on.”

Pujols had three RBIs in the first three innings, and the Angels added three more runs in the fourth, on a barely-fair, bases-clearing David Fletcher double that left a baseball-sized impression in the wet chalk behind third base.

Staked to a 6-2 lead, Angels southpaw Andrew Heaney ran into trouble of in the bottom half of the fourth, in large part due to a strikeout-wild pitch to Elvis Andrus that would have been the third out but instead led to three runs.

Andrus reached first on the play and Carlos Tocci, who had walked, scored from second. Both Odor and Andrus later scored.

Heaney left after 5 ⅓ innings, 10 hits and six earned runs.

“Frustrating,” Heaney said. “I pretty much had the leadoff guy on every single inning, got to two strikes with guys, didn’t put them away, gave up some cheapies. They hit some balls hard, too, and the fourth inning, the walk to the nine-hole [Tocci] … I just kind of let it snowball from there.”

Still, the Angels had the score nailed down by the end of the seventh. Taylor Ward hit his first career homer after Ohtani’s blast, and relievers Williams Jerez and Blake Parker did not allow a run over the final two innings.