Chadwick Exits Fast as Angels Lose, 6-3

Ray Chadwick’s chances of lasting as the Angels’ fifth starter were set back Sunday when he not only failed to get out of the first inning but also failed to get any outs in the first inning.

Chadwick, making his second major league start, faced Seattle’s first five batters in an eventual 6-3 Mariner victory that cut the Angels’ lead over Texas in the American League West to two games. All of those first five Mariner batters reached base. Four of them scored.

At that point, Angel Manager Gene Mauch removed the rookie from the game. He’d seen enough--and this was not exactly the kind of progress report that Mauch wanted after observing Chadwick’s promising, but losing, debut last week in Oakland.

“Chadwick had only one pitch get over the plate, and that’s not enough,” Mauch said. “He got two or three of them over in Oakland--changeup, breaking ball and fastball. Today, all he had was a fastball.”

And not a particularly fast one, at that. The Mariners certainly weren’t fooled. They had Chadwick timed with almost uncanny precision.

Spike Owen, the leadoff hitter, singled up the middle. Phil Bradley lined a hit-and-run single to right, sending Owen to third. Jim Presley singled up the middle for one run. After Ken Phelps walked--on four pitches--Alvin Davis singled up the middle for two more runs.

A trend seemed to be developing here. Mauch was hoping to see the start of a different trend.

Like an out.

Finally, with his team down, 3-0, Mauch ran out of patience. He replaced Chadwick with Vern Ruhle, who got an out--two, in fact--before yielding an RBI single to Steve Yeager. He then got Harold Reynolds to ground to first base for the third out, and the afternoon’s line on Chadwick was final.

The damage: four hits, one walk, four runs. Zero innings pitched.

It was shortest appearance by an Angel starting pitcher all year, bettering Jim Slaton’s one-out affair against Cleveland June 8 and Don Sutton’s two-out excursion against Seattle April 15.

Chadwick said he’d never seen, nor experienced, anything like it.

“The shortest I’d ever gone was 1 innings,” he said. “That was this year at Edmonton. And it went the same way--they got seven hits and there were four broken bats.”

Chadwick noted that three of Seattle’s singles went bouncing by second base and into center field. He described them as well-placed ground balls.

“As a pitcher, that’s what you’re striving to do,” he said. “They had four hits, but only one (Bradley’s) was a line drive. They all found holes.”

Chadwick said he didn’t succumb to nerves. He said he wasn’t surprised when Mauch made the pitching change--”I hadn’t gotten an out and the bases were loaded,” he said--and admitted he was trying to get by with one pitch. “I couldn’t get any breaking balls over,” he said.

But Chadwick also wanted to say that the looks of his performance were somewhat deceiving.

“I don’t think I threw that badly,” Chadwick said. “I know how the box score will read. But, you had to be there.”

Wally Joyner left Sunday’s proceedings almost as quickly as Chadwick. He fouled a pitch off his right shin in the second inning and left the game with a bad bruise. Joyner was taken to nearby Providence Hospital for precautionary X-rays, which proved negative. His status was classified by Angel trainers as day-to-day.

That’s similar to the status of the Angels’ missing link--the fifth starting pitcher. They’ve plugged in four names already--Slaton, Ron Romanick, Mike Cook and Chadwick--and after Sunday, Mauch is considering a fifth.

Ruhle worked seven innings of scoreless relief, yielding five hits and no walks. “That was further than we had a right to expect from him,” Mauch said. He also said he was considering giving Ruhle a start, although Mauch emphasized that the idea was still in the considering stage.

“It’s something to think about,” Mauch said. “But not now. I’ve got other things to think about, like the next four games.”

Ruhle held the Mariners in check long enough for the Angels to make a stab at a comeback. In the sixth inning, Bobby Grich singled, Jack Howell doubled and Dick Schofield hit a sacrifice fly. Ruppert Jones then delivered his 12th home run, pulling the Angels to within 4-3.

But thereafter, the Angels never put another runner on second base. Gary Pettis got there momentarily on a stolen-base try in the seventh inning. He beat Yeager’s throw, but overslid the base--where shortstop Owen was waiting to place the tag on him.

Seattle reliever Pete Ladd (6-2) held the Angels to one hit over the final 3 innings while the Mariners added to their lead with two runs in the eighth.

But for Chadwick and the Angels, the inning to mull over was the first. Maybe it really wasn’t as bad as it looked, as Chadwick suggested.

But it definitely wasn’t good enough to give the Angels a definite answer about their No. 5. The search continues.

Five days from now, depending on the result of Mauch’s thought processes, Chadwick hopes to still be in the hunt.

Angel Notes

Wally Joyner’s bruised right shin isn’t serious enough to keep him out of the lineup, according to Angel trainer Rick Smith, but Gene Mauch said he was planning to rest Joyner soon and the injury gives him an excuse. Joyner had been the only Angel to play in all of the team’s 104 games. “I saw him come bouncing in here after he got back from the hospital, I mean really bouncing, and that made me feel good,” Mauch said. “But I was thinking of giving him one or two days off. My guess is that he won’t play (Monday).” Thus, a streak could end for Joyner. “He has plenty of time to catch Steve Garvey,” Mauch said. “And he wasn’t going to catch Lou Gehrig, anyway.” . . . Seattle starting pitcher, Jerry Reed, wasn’t so fortunate in his confrontation with the baseball. Gary Pettis hit Reed with a line drive in the fourth inning, sending Reed out of the game and giving Joyner company at Providence Hospital. Reed’s X-rays, however, showed a broken right wrist. It was placed in a cast and Reed is expected to miss four to six weeks.

Ray Chadwick’s status with the Angels has been start-to-start from the outset. Mauch said he hasn’t given up on the rookie after Sunday’s first-inning washout. “I’m not mad at Chadwick,” Mauch said. “At this point, his career parallels (Kirk) McCaskill’s. McCaskill didn’t stand the league on its ear when he first came up.” McCaskill went 0-4 in his first eight starts last season and was nearly demoted again to Edmonton before righting himself to finish the year with the Angels at 12-12. “If (Chadwick) can get his breaking ball and changeup over like he did at Oakland, he can have a winning-type game,” Mauch said. . . . Vern Ruhle said he could empathize with Chadwick. “I know exactly what he’s feeling, and it’s a miserable feeling,” Ruhle said. “It’s harder when you’re younger. You can’t say anything except look at the positives. Any of those ground balls up the middle could have been a double-play ball. What you can’t do is knock your head against the wall and lull around in the negatives.”

Bobby Grich’s fourth-inning single off Reed was the 1,800th base hit of his career. . . . Whatever Happened to Stu Cliburn Dept.: Since returning from the Edmonton Trappers’ disabled list July 19, Cliburn has made five appearances, not allowing an earned run in six innings. For the season, Cliburn has allowed one earned run in 9 innings (0.93 earned-run average).