HOUSTON -- Shohei Ohtani led off the seventh inning with a single and Mike Trout followed with a walk. Lance McCullers Jr.’s gem was suddenly seeming on the rocks, but he had a plan. He turned to middle infielders Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa and told them to be ready for a double play.

McCullers couldn’t have predicted it any more accurately. He got Jared Walsh, who entered the game with seven hits in his previous 11 at-bats, to hit a grounder to Altuve at second base, starting a 4-6-3 double play that was the pivotal moment in the Astros’ 5-1 win over the Angels on Tuesday night at Minute Maid Park.

• Box score

“I knew if I made the right pitch it was going to be on the ground,” McCullers said. “At that point, I did what I could do. Altuve did a great job and the Carlos throw … fantastic. That was a big moment in the game, obviously. That was probably the play, the moment of the game that will go unnoticed, but it probably won us the game today.”

McCullers outdueled Ohtani by striking out nine batters and allowing one run and three hits in eight innings -- his longest outing since July 22, 2016. Ohtani struck out 10 batters while holding the Astros to four hits and one run in seven innings. The lone run came on a Kyle Tucker leadoff homer to left field in the fifth inning. Ohtani moved to right field in the eighth and remained in the lineup.

“I thought it was fun,” McCullers said. “I know people apparently don’t like pitchers’ duels, but I thought tonight was a pretty fun game. It was quick. It was sub-three hours. I felt like today’s game kind of had everything. I feel like if you're a fan at home or at the stadium watching today, you feel pretty happy about what you watched.”

Especially when the Astros scored four runs in the eighth, capped by a Yuli Gurriel three-run homer into the Crawford Boxes, to secure the win for McCullers. Ryan Pressly pitched a 1-2-3 ninth, completing the blueprint Astros manager Dusty Baker laid out for McCullers.

“We had a little discussion before the game and I told him that we needed to give the bullpen a night off and the only guy I wanted to see out of the bullpen was Pressly,” Baker said. “[McCullers] gave us exactly what I asked for and exactly what we needed. … He was dealing. He was striking them out. One of the key plays was the double play that they turned. There are very few shortstops that have the arm strength to turn that double play.”

On the double play, Walsh hit a sharp grounder to Altuve, who threw to Correa for the forceout at second. Correa, with Walsh going home to first in 4.45 seconds, fired an 84.8 mph laser to Gurriel at first, according to Statcast, to barely get the out. McCullers ended the seventh by retiring Justin Upton to strand Ohtani at third before giving up a game-tying homer to Taylor Ward in the eighth.

“Carlos has got to be the best in the business at getting the ball around the diamond, especially in those big double plays,” McCullers said. “That was huge, and the offense grinding all day against another pretty good pitcher and coming together and putting up a great eighth inning.”

McCullers, who signed a five-year, $85 million contract extension in the spring, is emerging as the Astros’ undisputed ace. He’s 2-0 with a 2.00 ERA and 0.96 WHIP in his last four starts, allowing 15 hits with 31 strikeouts in 27 innings, and lowered his ERA to 3.10 and WHIP to 1.06.

“I’ve been searching through film and just everything, trying to figure out some of the location issues when they would kind of come and go,” McCullers said. “I think I may have found something this week and we implemented it and I felt good today. Obviously, things change, but it’s nice to have the confidence in my teammates, but when you get locked in and get in one of those zones, you kind of just roll with it.”