Major League Baseball
BOXSCORE | RECAP
Oakland 3, LA Angels 1
When: 10:05 PM ET, Friday, September 23, 2011
Where: Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Anaheim, California
Temperature: 68°
Umpires: Home - Derryl Cousins, 1B - Tom Hallion, 2B - Ron Kulpa, 3B - Jim Wolf
Attendance: 39217

Gio Gonzalez outdueled Jered Weaver as the visiting Oakland Athletics earned a 3-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Friday, which allowed Texas to clinch its second straight American League West title.

The Angels trail the Boston Red Sox by 3 1/2 games in the AL wild card race with five to play. Boston was rained out at New York on Friday.

Los Angeles tied the game in the seventh inning on a solo home run by Torii Hunter before Oakland came back to score the go-ahead run in the eighth. Kurt Suzuki led off the inning with a base hit against Weaver (18-8), was sacrificed to second by Scott Sizemore, took third on a wild pitch and came in on an error by Angels third baseman Maicer Izturis.

Gonzalez (15-12) allowed three hits and struck out five in 7 1/3 innings. His two walks were issued to the last two hitters he faced, but the Angels left the bases loaded against reliever Grant Balfour. Oakland's David DeJesus added an insurance run with a solo homer in the ninth to chase Weaver and Andrew Bailey worked the bottom half for his 22nd save.

Weaver allowed three runs, six hits and struck out eight in 8 1/3 innings.

Jemile Weeks, who hit his first career home run Thursday, led off Friday's game with his second when he drove a 1-1 pitch from Weaver over the right-field wall.
Top Game Performances
Starting Pitchers
Oakland   LA Angels
Gio Gonzalez Player Jered Weaver
Win W/L Loss
7.1 IP 8.1
5 Strikeouts 8
3 Hits 6
1.23 ERA 2.16
Hitting
Oakland   LA Angels
Kurt Suzuki Player Mark Trumbo
2 Hits 2
0 RBI 0
0 HR 0
2 TB 2
.667 Avg .500
Team Stats Summary
 
Team Hits HR TB Avg LOB K RBI BB SB Errors
Oakland 6 2 13 .188 6 8 2 0 1 1
LA Angels 3 1 6 .100 10 5 1 3 0 1