CONCACAF Gold Cup opener: Vazquez’s 88th-minute goal gives the US 1-1 draw with Jamaica

• June 25, 2023

CHICAGO — Brandon Vazquez saved the United States from what would have been the Americans’ first loss in a CONCACAF Gold Cup opener.

Vazquez’s 88th-minute goal gave the No. 13 U.S. a 1-1 draw against 63rd-ranked Jamaica on Saturday night. He had entered the match six minutes earlier, tying him to the U.S. with his first competitive international appearance. Born in Chula Vista, California, the 24-year-old forward could have played for Mexico.

“It means everything,” said Vazquez, who was overlooked for last year’s World Cup roster. “To be able to score a goal in my cap tie is amazing.”

Damion Lowe put the Reggae Boyz ahead in the 13th minute, and Matt Turner kept the U.S. close by saving a penalty kick on his 29th birthday. The defending champions came back when Jesús Ferreira’s cross hit off defender Dexter Lembikisa to Vazquez, who scored with a right-foot shot from 7 yards for his second goal in four international appearances.

“It’s kind of two lost points,” said Jamaica coach Heimir Hallgrímsson, who led Iceland at the 2018 World Cup.

“They are in-season. A young, energetic team,” he said about the U.S. “A lot of our players are coming from a break from their season, so I knew this game would be tricky.”

Before an announced crowd of 36,666 at Solider Field, Lowe scored his third goal in 53 international appearances with a header from 8 yards following Demarai Gray’s free kick. Lowe was played onside when Matt Miazga dropped back on the restart by Gray, an Everton winger who made his Reggae Boyz debut after switching affiliation from England.

Next up for the Americans is a Wednesday match in St. Louis with 139th-ranked St. Kitts and Nevis, which opens Sunday against No. 104 Trinidad and Tobago.

The U.S., which fielded a mostly junior varsity team, had 15 wins in 16 previous Gold Cup openers, the blemish a 1-1 draw against Panama in 2017. The U.S. has 38 wins, five draws and one loss in the group stage — a 2-1 defeat to the Panamanians in 2011.

Turner was the only U.S. player who was a regular at last year’s World Cup and one of just five holdovers from last week’s Nations League roster. He dived to his left to parry a 29th-minute penalty kick by Leon Bailey, who put the rebound wide with his weaker right foot.

“He’s a player that came to us and wanted to play both tournaments,” U.S. interim coach B.J. Callaghan said. “I always say big players make big plays.”

The penalty was awarded when Aidan Morris knocked down Kevon Lambert following a throw-in.

Jamaica goalkeeper Andre Blake deflected Jordan Morris’ open shot in first-half stoppage time with his right arm, then blocked Cristian Roldan’s 71st-minute effort with a leg.

Notes: Eight U.S. starters were from Major League Soccer. … Gregg Berhalter, whose contract expired in December and who was rehired June 16, was on hand to watch and won’t resume coaching until September. … Aiden Morris, Alan Soñora and Cade Cowell played their first competitive matches for the U.S., also tying them to the American team.

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Floyd fans 17 and Beloso’s HR in 11th gives LSU a win over Florida in CWS Game 1

• June 25, 2023

By ERIC OLSON AP Sports Writer

OMAHA, Neb. — After being overshadowed all season by the best pitcher in college baseball, Ty Floyd basked in the spotlight Saturday night.

He earned it.

Floyd struck out a career-high 17 for the most in a College World Series game in 51 years and Cade Beloso hit the tiebreaking homer in the top of the 11th inning to lift LSU over Florida 4-3 in Game 1 of the CWS finals.

“We aren’t sitting here without Ty Floyd,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “He’s one of the most underappreciated players in college baseball this year.”

The Tigers (53-16) can wrap up their seventh national championship, and first since 2009, with another win over the Gators (53-16) on Sunday.

Floyd began the season in the bullpen before moving into the No. 2 starter’s role behind Paul Skenes, the first college pitcher in 12 years with more than 200 strikeouts and likely to be taken first or second in next month’s amateur draft.

“With Paul being so out-of-this-world good, nobody’s really paid attention to him, but the pro people are,” Johnson said of Floyd. “He’s not going to last very long on the draft board. Somebody will be very, very happy with Ty Floyd. I think he’ll pitch for a very long time.”

The junior right-hander was at his best in the eighth when he struck out the top of the Florida order. That includes Wyatt Langford, a projected top-five overall draft pick, and national home run co-leader Jac Caglianone.

Floyd started walking to the dugout after finishing off Caglianone, then went back and picked up the ball as a keepsake.

LSU closer Riley Cooper (5-3) took over in the ninth after Floyd struck out the most batters in a CWS game since Arizona State’s Ed Bane fanned 17 in a 1-0 win over Oklahoma in 1972.

“With as many people as were here tonight, the adrenaline felt good,” Floyd said. “I knew that throwing my fastball at the top of the zone, being able to mix in off-speed pitches enough to get them off was the biggest thing tonight.”

Beloso’s blast came after LSU left fielder Josh Pearson made a leaping catch to keep Florida from scoring the winning run in the 10th. Beloso’s three-run homer in a 5-2 win over Wake Forest on Wednesday kept the Tigers’ season alive, and he came up against Florida closer Brandon Neely (3-2) to lead off the 11th.

Beloso sent Neely’s second pitch over the right-field fence, raised his left index finger to the sky as he rounded third and stuck out his tongue as he crossed home plate. Then he beat his chest, pulled on the front of his jersey a couple times and chest-bumped Floyd on his way into the dugout.

“The previous at-bat, he struck me out on three straight heaters and I figured he would go back to it,” Beloso said. “They weren’t going to switch anything up. I got one I was supposed to swing at and put a good swing on it.”

Cooper worked out of trouble in the ninth and 10th before pitching a 1-2-3 11th that ended with him striking out BT Riopelle and Deric Fabian, setting off a celebration among the throng of LSU fans that included Cincinnati Bengals quarterback and 2019 LSU national champion Joe Burrow.

It looked as though Wyatt Langford had the winning hit for Florida in the 10th when he sent a high liner to left, but Pearson ran back and made a leaping catch. That brought up Caglianone, who popped out to end the inning.

“We played 11 innings and lost on a pitch on a 1-0 count,” Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “We didn’t play our best baseball, but the message tomorrow is we’ve got nothing to lose at this point. We’re in the College World Series and we’re playing in the finals. We can’t let this leak into tomorrow.”

Riopelle hit his 18th homer of the year, and eighth in 14 games, to put the Gators up 3-2 in the sixth.

Tommy White, who sent the Tigers to the finals with his 11th-inning walk-off homer against Wake Forest on Thursday, tied it in the eighth when he hammered Cade Fisher’s 0-2 slider into the left-field seats for his 24th of the season.

The game was a CWS record-tying eighth decided by one run.

LSU managed to win despite striking out 16 times and leaving 17 runners on base against Brandon Sproat, Fisher and Neely.

“Baseball is a tough game and when runners get on, that’s when pitchers make their best pitches,” Beloso said. “In terms of not getting the job done, no one was freaking out about it. We just keep playing and know eventually we’ll come through.”

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LAFC upset by Veselinovic, Whitecaps

• June 25, 2023

LOS ANGELES —The Vancouver Whitecaps ended a 15-match winless streak in Major League Soccer away games, upsetting the Los Angeles Football Club 3-2 at BMO Stadium on Saturday.

During their two CONCACAF Champions League encounters in April, Vancouver (6-5-7, 25 points) was unable to score once over 180 minutes. But by the 23rd minute of their first MLS contest of the year, the Whitecaps scored two times to secure a lead they did not relinquish.

The opening half was a mad dash, producing 20 shots, 12 on target, and three goals. After full time, the Western Conference sides totalled 33 shots, 18 of which were on frame.

The finish was LAFC’s second league defeat at home in three matches, and ended a two-game winning streak.

After the second fastest goal in club history on Wednesday (officially 53 seconds), LAFC had the tables turned on them three days later.

Thin at center back due to injuries and international call-ups, head coach Steve Cherundolo started midfielder Ilie Sanchez on the backline alongside Denil Maldonado, Ryan Hollingshead and Diego Palacios.

The circumstances proved potent for Vancouver’s sizable center forwards Brian White and Sergio Cordova, as well as 6-foot-2 defender Ranko Veselinovic, who initiated the scoring with the fastest goal against LAFC this year, good for the fifth fastest all-time, one minute and 55 seconds after the opening whistle.

A headed finish by the Serbian off a corner kick from midfielder Ryan Gauld set the first half tone for LAFC, which was forced to defend mutiple balls into the box that challenged defenders and goalkeeper John McCarthy.

Vancouver’s second goal occurred following a giveaway by Jose Cifuentes on Vancouver’s side of the field that forced Maldonado and Sanchez to scramble back trying to defend a three-on-two counter attack.

With the ball pushed out to the left side, Cordova and White camped out in the box. Gauld’s pass at the back post carried above Sanchez’s head. White rose to meet it and the ball floated over McCarthy into the net.

LAFC’s leading scorer, forward Denis Bouanga, brought the Black & Gold life when he connected on his 11th goal of the year prior to the half.

A multi-pass combination between Hollingshead, Stipe Biuk and Carlos Vela ended deep in the Whitecaps box, creating a tremendous chance for Hollingshead in front of Japanese goalkeeper Yohei Takaoka. The save spilled to Bouanga who coolly made it a one-goal game.

The pace remained high through the subsequent 45 minutes.

Gauld added a goal to go with two assists in the 63rd minute when a point blank save by McCarthy on a Cordova shot rolled to the edge of the box, where the Scotsman hit a low skidder for a third goal. It was the first time since August of 2021 that a visiting team scored three times against LAFC.

Five minutes later, Vela pulled one back with his sixth MLS goal of the season. Mateusz Bogusz chested the ball down and found the LAFC captain who was alone in the middle of the box and completed an adroit tip-toe finish.

It marked the second time Vela and Bouanga scored in the same match for LAFC, but unlike last year’s Supporters’ Shield clincher in Portland they did not come out victorious despite contributions from their most productive weapons.

LAFC (9-4-5, 32 points) slipped into a first place tie with St. Louis, and has a week off between matches prior to visiting Dallas next week for the first time before playing the Champions League final against Leon.

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Alexander: Another sour outing for Dodgers’ Bobby Miller

• June 25, 2023

LOS ANGELES – Through his first four big league starts, Dodgers’ right-hander Bobby Miller was providing ace-level performance.

The last two Saturdays, however, reality has smacked him in the face, the same moment that all rookies experience sooner or later. The message: Kid, this game ain’t that easy.

A week ago he gave up seven runs to the Giants, all earned, in 5-2/3 innings in what turned out to be a 15-0 bludgeoning by San Francisco. And instead of redemption this time against the Houston Astros, Miller had a dreadful fifth inning: Seven hitters faced, five hits and five runs, including a Jose Altuve bunt single that unnerved him and an Alex Bregman grand slam immediately following that cost him the lead.

This time, his teammates bailed him out, with David Peralta’s pinch-hit two-run homer in the seventh bringing the Dodgers close and a three-run rally in the eighth, punctuated by a balk call that scored the go-ahead run, slamming the lid on the Astros, 8-7.

So maybe that’s the best of both worlds, a series of educational moments that hurt but don’t cost your team the game. It was a wild finish that almost had an October feel to it, and by the time it was decided the 24-year-old Miller was a footnote.

Among Saturday’s lessons: Don’t overuse the fastball early in the game, even when you have one that lights up radar guns the way Miller’s does. And don’t allow adverse events to get into your head.

When his fastball – listed by Statcast as a sinker – is right, it hits triple-digits. Miller threw sinkers on 10 of his first 12 pitches and 46 of his 80 pitches, and 20 of them topped 100 mph with 12 others in the 99 range. But in the fifth, all five hits came on fastballs.

Houston manager Dusty Baker, during his pre-game media briefing, was reminded of Miller’s velocity, and made this point:

“For a good hitter, hard don’t bother. Everybody’s about hard, but it’s about pitching, and command. If a guy throws hard and has command, now you got a problem.”

Miller said after Saturday’s game he felt he relied on the heater “a little bit too much” his last two starts.

“I started off with a a ton of fastballs, a lot of fastballs out there,” he said. “So maybe it wasn’t effective later in the game as it could have been because I gave them a really heavy dose of fastballs early in the game. You know, I probably could have mixed it better the whole entire game instead of waiting until the end to start mixing it, you know, mix it the whole time, which protects my fastball a little more so it gets on ’em a little more.”

The grand slam by Bregman came on a 98.3 mph fastball, for what it’s worth.

The play before that frustrated Miller. With runners on first and second and none out, Altuve bunted hard between the mound and first base. Freddie Freeman handled the bunt, but Miller was a little tardy getting to first base and Altuve beat it out for a single to load the bases.

“I don’t know” if there was a correlation between the bunt and the Bregman grand slam that followed, manager Dave Roberts said. “I do know that he was pretty rattled about that, you know, whether he says it or not. But I do think that there’s certain things that you still got to limit damage and continue to make good pitches. And, you know, you can see that inning where his tempo sped up. He just kind of forgot about secondary pitches and they were putting the ball in play, and you got to tip your hat to those guys in that situation.”

Catcher Will Smith seemed to agree.

“It kind of got away from him,” he said. “He might have lost a little bit on that bunt hit by Altuve. Wasn’t able to get out of that jam.

“Overall, he attacked. They came out pretty aggressive with some soft contact for hits. Obviously the Bregman homer hurts. Maybe we could’ve gone slider; you overthink it.”

Miller said he was frustrated but not rattled by the bunt. Then again, the last thing an athlete wants to do is show or acknowledge such weakness, so it would be perfectly understandable if he just didn’t wish to admit it.

“You know, mentally I felt good after the bunt,” he said. “Probably frustrated me a little bit. You know, I wasn’t expecting a bunt. But, you know, it’s same as always. It’s the basics. You know, every pitcher knows they got to get over there and cover first earlier.

“… The homer? Yeah I mean, (he) put a good swing on it, 2-2 count. He’s sitting fastball probably, I mean you never know. But got to locate the offspeed better in that count. Maybe could have got another slider right there, but you never know. He put a good swing on it.”

Given that (a) that turn of events gave Houston a 5-3 lead, and (b) Altuve and Bregman remain the two main villains in the eyes of Dodger fans, serenaded with boos and chants of “Chea-ter” as the only remaining Astros from the 2017 World Series, those plays by those players hurt even more. Yanier Diaz added an RBI single later in the inning to knock him out, and Miller’s ledger read 10 hits, six earned runs, three walks and three strikeouts in four-plus innings. He pitched to seven hitters in the fifth and got no outs.

As noted above, Roberts thought the game might have sped up for Miller in that inning, and in situations like that the pitch clock makes it tough, but not necessarily impossible, to slow things down a tad. But Miller, who pitched with the clock in the minors, said that wasn’t a factor.

“Mentally I was fine, you know?” he said. “I’ll be back next start. And I’ll be a lot better.”

Yes, adversity is an educational tool. He’ll get another shot Friday in Kansas City, and that may be where we learn some things about his resilience.

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Angels set franchise records with rout of Rockies

• June 25, 2023

DENVER — Mike Trout, Brandon Drury and Matt Thaiss homered in succession on three consecutive pitches, touching off a franchise record-tying 13-run inning that stood out as the brightest part in a dazzling offensive show carrying the Angels to a 25-1 win over the Colorado Rockies on Saturday night.

It was the largest margin of victory (24) for the Angels, surpassing a 22-run margin (24-2 score) against Toronto on Aug. 25, 1979. The team’s 28 hits were also the most ever in team history, blowing past the previous high of 26 at Boston on June 20, 1980.

Leading the hit parade were Mickey Moniak and Hunter Renfroe, who each had five hits and 4 RBI. David Fletcher, in his first game since being recalled from the minor leagues, had four hits and five RBI. Drury, Thaiss, and Trout all had three hits apiece and Eduardo Escobar had two hits and an RBI in his first game with the Angels since being acquired in a trade Friday with the New York Mets.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been part of anything like that, just one after another,” Moniak said. “Just the quality of at bats we had today were incredible. That’s just what happens when you piece them together like that. Obviously, maybe not to that extent always, but you know, it was really fun to be a part of.”

The Angels sent 16-men to the plate and collected 10 hits in the big third inning as part of tying the most productive inning in team history, capped by Moniak’s second hit of the frame, a two-run homer. They also scored 13 runs in an inning against the Chicago White Sox on May 12, 1997.

In the fourth, the Angels put together an eight-run inning, highlighted by a three-run homer by Fletcher. When Moniak scored from third on Taylor Ward’s forceout in the sixth, it produced the Angels’ 24th run, tying the franchise record for most runs in a game. They broke past the record — exceeding the 24 runs at Toronto on Aug. 25, 1979 — when Moniak scored again from third in the eighth on another RBI forceout by Ward.

“We were aggressive. We attacked pitches in the zone,” Angels manager Phil Nevin said. “Hitting gets contagious sometimes and to be honest, we found some holes and then the big blows, we’re adding on runs.”

The Rockies finally scored in the bottom of the eighth on a solo homer by Brenton Doyle off reliever Kolton Ingram, bringing a loud mocking cheer from the crowd of more than 45,000.

Amid the offensive show, the Angels got an outstanding performance from Griffin Canning (6-2), who pitched six scoreless innings, checking the Rockies on four hits. He struck out seven and walked none.

“Obviously, the offense kind of allowed me just to go out there and attack the zone,” Canning said.

Rockies starter Chase Anderson (0-2) didn’t get out of the third inning and was tagged for nine runs on 10 hits.

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Angels acquire Mike Moustakas in trade with Rockies

• June 25, 2023

DENVER — The Angels added another big bat and additional depth at first base by acquiring Mike Moustakas from the Rockies in a trade that was announced shortly after the Angels’ 25-1 win over Colorado on Saturday night.

The Angels sent the Rockies minor league right-handed pitcher Connor Van Scoyoc in exchange for the 34-year-old Moustakas,  who was batting .270 with seven doubles, four home runs and 17 RBI in 47 games with Colorado. He joined the Rockies on March 5, signing a minor league deal in early March.

The Angels designated Kevin Padlo for assignment after the game to make room on the roster for Moustakas.

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Rough starts ongoing for Galaxy, Rapids in 0-0 draw

• June 25, 2023

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — Jonathan Bond stopped one shot for Galaxy, William Yarbrough saved three for Colorado as the teams played to a scoreless draw on Saturday night.

The Galaxy (3-9-6) are struggling, having scored just 14 goals, the fewest in club history at this stage of a season. The Galaxy has gone 1-5-4 in its last 10 road matches. The Galaxy scored three goals in their lone victory — over Real Salt Lake — but just two in the other nine matches.

The struggles continue for the Rapids (2-9-8), who have yet to win at home and are off to the worst start in club history with just 14 points through 19 matches.

Colorado is 7-1-3 in its last 11 matches with the Galaxy, including a 3-1 victory earlier this season. The seven wins ties the Rapids with the Seattle Sounders and FC Dallas for most over the Galaxy in that time.

The Galaxy travel to play the San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday. The Rapids travel to play St. Louis City on Saturday.

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Los Alamitos horse racing consensus picks, Sunday, June 25, 2023

• June 25, 2023

The consensus box of Los Alamitos horse racing picks comes from handicappers Bob Mieszerski, Art Wilson, Terry Turrell and Eddie Wilson. Here are the picks for thoroughbred races on Sunday, June 25, 2023.

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