It’s Walks in the Park for Angels : Joyner, Downing Get Healthy in 13-1 Romp Over Twins

First you start with an awful pitching staff. Then you surround it with a sometimes-adequate defense, situate it in a hitter’s ballpark and you’ll manage to create some possibilities that are downright dangerous.

The Minnesota Twins have done this, and Tuesday night’s 13-1 loss to the Angels before 22,689 at the Metrodome was another example of how they can quickly come undone.

The Angel offense, which virtually vanished last weekend in the Great Northwest, has been whipped back into shape here. The Angels established a season high for hits in one game by collecting 18 against five Minnesota pitchers.

Wally Joyner, who hadn’t homered or driven in a run since July 23, broke both slumps with a two-run home run in the third inning, his 22nd of the year. Brian Downing, batting .185 since July 4, had two doubles, two singles and two RBIs. Gary Pettis had four singles, and Bob Boone drove in four runs.

And when they weren’t hitting, the Angels were usually walking. Twin pitchers Allan Anderson, Ron Davis, Juan Agosto, Frank Pastore and Keith Atherton issued 11 bases on balls, leaving the Angels one shy of the club record of 12, set in 1961.

There were also three Minnesota errors, a wild pitch, a passed ball and a hit batter. The Twins put so many Angels on base that the Angels stranded 17 runners and no one even flinched.

But then, that’s nothing new for Minnesota. Milwaukee left 19 runners on base against the Twins on May 16.

But Tuesday’s debacle may have been a season low for Minnesota. Things got so bad that afterward, several local writers asked Twin Manager Ray Miller why he hadn’t tried, say, Kent Hrbek or Gary Gaetti, on the mound. The sight of Hrbek throwing curves could not have been any worse than the Minnesota bullpen walking batter after batter after batter.

“I didn’t want to make a farce out of it,” Miller said with a straight face. “We ran enough people out there without putting a regular into pitch.”

Miller even ran Atherton, his short-relief specialist, out there. Atherton entered the game in the eighth inning. Save opportunity? The only thing he was trying to save was a shred of dignity for the Twins.

“Somebody had to throw,” Atherton said. “Just get it over with.”

All in all, it was ugly--although Angel Manager Gene Mauch might argue that real beauty is in the eye of the beholder. “Ugly?” he said. “Not exactly.”

Mauch wanted to talk about his pitcher Mike Witt, who improved his record to 12-7 with his fourth career three-hitter. “What do you call it when you don’t waste anything? Economical?” Mauch said. “That’s what Mike was tonight. He made only 103 pitches, quite low for him.”

Mauch also wanted to talk about his team’s offensive recovery. “You don’t know when something like this is ever gonna happen,” he said, “but you know when guys have got their swings down. We were not lucky, but we hit the ball great in Seattle. And we didn’t hit that badly last night (Monday’s 6-5 loss). We just didn’t hold them.”

The Angels took care of that problem by burying the Twins early. They led, 5-1, after three innings, 8-1 after five and added four runs in the last two innings.

A lot of people got healthy in a hurry.

Joyner, who equaled the American League record with seven official plate appearances in a nine-inning game, ended a 12-game spell without an RBI by clearing the center-field wall in the third inning. Boosting his RBI total to 76, it was only his third home run since June 14.

Downing, whose batting average dropped 30 points to .267 since developing a case of viral bronchitis July 4, hit into a double play in his first at-bat, walked his next time up and then went 4 for 4 with two RBIs the rest of the way.

And Boone, with just 27 RBIs, had three before collecting his first hit Tuesday. He drove in a run on a ground out and walked twice with the bases loaded before singling in the sixth and doubling in the eighth.

Boone has played 14 years, but it’s a good bet he never drove in three runs without a hit before.

“I don’t remember getting three RBIs in a game, period,” Boone said with a grin.

He said the Angels caught a pitching staff on the downswing, in a park where even a light swing can produce major action.

“When a pitcher’s struggling, you shrink your strike zone,” Boone said. “You make sure you don’t help him by swinging at anything out of the strike zone. You be very patient.”

And on the Metrodome: “Too many balls go through (the infield) here. It’s unreal. On this turf, you don’t have to do that much with the ball. Just strike it firmly.”

Downing agreed.

“On a field like this,” he said, “there are an awful lot of ways to get hits.”

And Tuesday night, thanks to the assistance of the Minnesota Twin pitching staff, the Angels explored virtually every one of them.

Angel Notes

After meeting with pitching coach Marcel Lachemann, Gene Mauch has decided to start Vern Ruhle Friday in place of Ray Chadwick, one move that could signal another--Chadwick’s return to Edmonton. Relief pitcher Terry Forster is expected to rejoin the Angels by the end of the week, meaning Mauch will have to drop a pitcher to make room for Forster. Chadwick seems the most likely candidate, although Mauch won’t talk about it until he watches Forster throw on the sidelines in Anaheim Thursday. “Those are things players don’t like to read in the paper,” he said. Ruhle will start against Seattle, the same team he shut out through seven innings of relief last Sunday.