Angels ’87 : Big Five Are Pitching In to Ensure Youth Movement Is Served : Mauch’s Talented Cast Stars Witt, McCaskill, Candelaria, Sutton, Lugo

Suppose Devon White turns out to be more Willie Crawford than Willie Wilson. Suppose rookie second baseman Mark McLemore can’t hit his weight. Suppose Jack Howell gets lost in left and Wally Joyner can’t rediscover the batting stroke that left him sometime around last year’s All-Star break.

What then?

If the grand youth-and-speed experiment proves to be a premature gamble and the Angel offense has to strain to crank out one and two runs a game, what’s to prevent the defending American League West champions from turning belly-up in the defense of their title?

Gene Mauch has a simple, plain, two-word answer.

“Starting pitching,” he said.

To Mauch, Mike Witt, Kirk McCaskill, John Candelaria, Don Sutton and Urbano Lugo represent more than the usual five-man rotation. To Mauch, that quintet is the Angels’ ultimate safety valve.

“The influx of young players we have this year could be dangerous,” Mauch conceded. “We’re breaking in three or four new kids.

“But we have solid starting pitching. And pitching is such a high percentage of every ballgame. That’s why I feel comfortable with this team.”

Some background is needed here. Mauch has managed a lot of teams over the past quarter-century, but never a lot of pitching. Take away Jim Bunning and Chris Short and name a starting pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies of the 1960s. Name a starting pitcher for the Minnesota Twins of the late 1970s. Name any pitcher for the expansion Montreal Expos.

Mauch managed--endured?--all of them, so it’s easy to understand why he looks at his current Angel staff as a veritable embarrassment of riches.

In 1986, the Angels were the only team in the American League with three 15-game winners. Witt went 18-10 with a 2.84 earned-run average, McCaskill finished 17-10 and Sutton--en route to his 300th career victory--wound up 15-11.

This year, the goal is four 15-game winners. Candelaria, who went 10-2 in half a season, is expected to make the jump when he pitches a full season.

“That’s not an unreasonable statement,” said Marcel Lachemann, Angel pitching coach. “All of them have won at least 15 games before. Three of them did it last year, and the only reason the other didn’t is because he was only in there for three months.”

Having Candelaria back from 1986 arm surgery is one additional asset to the 1987 rotation. The other is Lugo, who could give the Angels the consistency in the No. 5 spot that Jim Slaton, Ron Romanick, Mike Cook, Ray Chadwick and Vern Ruhle could not provide last summer.

It could shape up as the best starting staff in the American League this season. And, considering the uncertainty sprinkled throughout the batting order, the Angels may need it to be just that.

A closer look at the Angels’ starting five:

MIKE WITT

Potential finally kicked in during 1986 and Witt, at 26, took his place among the best pitchers in baseball.

He made the AL All-Star team for the first time. He finished third behind Roger Clemens and Ted Higuera in the AL Cy Young voting. He was voted the Angels’ most valuable player by his teammates.

When Witt won 18 regular-season games and beat Clemens, 8-1, in Game 1 of the playoffs, his name began popping up alongside Dwight Gooden, Fernando Valenzuela and Jack Morris in barroom conversations across America.

Lachemann wonders why it took so long.

“I don’t think that’s something the rest of baseball didn’t already know,” Lachemann said. “He was already a good pitcher the previous two seasons. He won 15 games both years.”

Until last season, Witt was widely regarded as the big kid who almost could--an unharnessed talent who won some, but because of his own mental lapses or the offensive lapses by his teammates, never won big. For years, the typical Mike Witt defeat was 3-2 or 2-1. And again last season, the Angels managed to score two runs or fewer in half of Witt’s losses.

Tough luck . . . or an inability to tough out the close ones? Lachemann suggests another reason.

“Mike’s our No. 1 guy. A lot of times, he gets matched up with the other team’s No. 1 guy,” Lachemann said. “The other guy is going to hold your team down, too. Mike gets involved in a lot of low-scoring games. He more than held his own.”

Already this spring, Witt put together a streak of 29 outs without allowing a hit, and after his first five starts, his ERA was 1.50.

“All my pitches are there,” Witt said. “I don’t think they can get much better than where they’re at now.”

Lachemann agreed.

“It would be very difficult for him to improve on anything,” he said. “It’s hard to say. Maybe he can move his fastball in and out of the strike zone a little more.

“Basically, he just has to maintain what he has.”

KIRK McCASKILL

McCaskill, a former hockey player, has come on faster than a slap shot from the point. In May 1985, he was an 0-4 rookie. By October 1985, he was 12-12. And by October 1986, he was 17-10 with a 3.36 ERA and 202 strikeouts in 246 innings.

“Last year, Kirk became one of the premier pitchers in the league,” Lachemann said.

This spring, McCaskill wanted to be paid like one. When he felt he wasn’t, he walked out of camp for six days before he agreed to a one-year salary of $232,000--a $90,000 raise from 1986.

From nervous walk-on in 1985 to a highly publicized walkout in 1987. What a swift, strange journey it has been.

“We can’t win without him,” Sutton said of McCaskill during the holdout. Sutton has said that McCaskill is to Witt what Don Drysdale was to Sandy Koufax. “If you’re looking for a foundation to build a pitching staff around, you can’t do better than Mike Witt and Kirk McCaskill,” Sutton said.

Lachemann credited McCaskill’s quick emergence to the confidence he gained between 1985 and 1986.

“He started feeling he belonged last year,” Lachemann said. “Guys finally get to the point that they realize that they’re here and that on a given day, they can beat anybody. It takes awhile to get that feeling. Kirk got it last year.”

McCaskill concurs with that assessment but breaks it down further.

“Part of my success is being aggressive,” he said. “In ‘85, I didn’t want to walk anybody and I’d give in to hitters. Last year, I started challenging hitters instead of saying, ‘Here, I hope you hit it at somebody.’ ”

Still, McCaskill showed some of his youth--and a lack of aggressiveness--during the playoffs. He went 0-2 in two starts, finishing with a 7.71 ERA.

“I was nervous,” McCaskill said. “But what happened in the playoffs has become strictly motivational for me. I worked hard during the winter. And every mile I ran, I thought about those two games.”

JOHN CANDELARIA

His career as an Angel has been less than angelic. Since he came to California from Pittsburgh in August 1985, Candelaria has suffered the anguish of losing a child and the pain of injuring an elbow to the extent that it required surgery and a three-month stint on the disabled list.

Yet, as an Angel, Candelaria has been remarkably proficient on the pitching mound. In less than a full season on the Angels’ active roster, Candelaria is 17-5 with a 3.10 ERA. He was the club’s best pitcher by the end of last season, compiling a 2.15 ERA in August and a 1.80 mark in September.

“John’s a professional,” Lachemann said. “He went through a very difficult time last year. Lesser people could not have handled it.”

Candelaria is proud of his 1986 season. “Ten and two is indicative that I overcame the arm problems,” he said. “A 2.55 ERA is indicative that I was throwing well. I didn’t get those numbers by being lucky.”

No, lucky is not an adjective often thrown around when discussing Candelaria. His 1987 spring has been problematic--a loss of velocity on his fastball and an unrelated loss of feeling in his right leg. Candelaria said he needs to throw more to strengthen his arm, yet the numbness in his leg has limited his activity.

The Angels will bring Candelaria around slowly, but they consider a little numbness in his leg to be a good deal better than a few bone spurs in his elbow. This season, they won’t have to wait until July before they pencil his name into the rotation every fifth day.

DON SUTTON

The Angels treat the 42-year-old Sutton with the type of care usually reserved for relics from the Pleistocene period--they dutifully cut his work load off at 100 pitches and they try to preserve his body with ice baths--and it’s hard to knock the results. Sutton, who averaged 15 victories and 11 losses during his first 20 seasons, finished 1986 at 15-11 with a 3.74 ERA.

Sutton doesn’t have the knuckleball that has sustained baseball’s most notable ancient pitcher, Phil Niekro, so conditioning and timing are critical to his success.

“Mechanics are very, very important to Don,” Lachemann said. “He can’t go too fast or too slow. He comes to spring training in good physical condition and takes his time to iron things out.”

Last season, Sutton needed April and nearly all of May to iron everything out. At one point, he was 2-5 with a 7.05 ERA and there was speculation that maybe he had overstayed his welcome. Then he went 4-0 in June and 9-6 the rest of the way.

“I don’t get any satisfaction out of proving somebody wrong,” Sutton said. “But I don’t think I have anything to to prove as far as age is concerned. If you can hit or field or pitch, what difference does it make how many days you have lived? The only thing age means is that if I go into a slump, it’s a bigger deal than if I was 25 years old.”

How long can Sutton keep up this sort of thing?

Said Lachemann: “I don’t see any difference in his stuff the last two or three years. And as long as he has his stuff . . .

“There’s no problem of him knowing what’s he’s doing. He’s probably the premier pitcher in baseball when it comes to knowing his trade, knowing hitters.

“When Don’s throwing good, it’s a treat to watch him work a hitter. It’s almost an art form.”

URBANO LUGO

Call it Urbano renewal. The Bermuda Triangle of the Angels’ 1986 rotation--the No. 5 starter--figures to be a much safer place now that Lugo, 24, a forkball pitcher, has made his long-awaited return.

Lugo, a Venezuelan, broke in alongside McCaskill in 1985 and made 10 starts, going 3-4 with a 3.69 ERA. That’s seven more starts than he made in 1986 because of the elbow surgery he underwent last January.

Lugo injured the arm while pitching in the Venezuelan Winter League, and it took him until September before rehabilitation was complete. In the final month of the season, Lugo went 1-1 with a 3.80 ERA.

That brought on another winter, which brought on immeasurably different results. Lugo pitched a no-hitter for Caracas, duplicating the feat his father, Urbano Lugo Sr., accomplished in 1973.

A 2.84 ERA in his first four starts this spring virtually completed the comeback. Mauch has tentatively named Lugo as his fifth starter.

“All of his velocity is back,” Lachemann said. “We knew he had his arm strength back from the reports from South America, and he’s shown it here. He’s got two fastballs--one that rises and one that sinks--a pretty good changeup and his breaking ball has improved.”

Lugo needed every pitch to fight off the challenge of rookie Willie Fraser. Fraser is the hardest thrower in the Angel organization--he has been clocked at 95 m.p.h.--and Mauch has called him the most pleasant surprise of the Angels’ spring camp. But Fraser is just 22, and 1986 was his first full season in professional baseball. He began that season in Class A.

“Lugo’s experience helps him,” Lachemann said. “He’s very experienced for a man of his years. He’s pitched in winter ball for a long time, and when he was growing up, he was always hanging around his father.”

And so, these are the five best reasons Mauch can give when making a case for a successful defense of the American League West championship.

McCaskill says they are good reasons, too.

“Candelaria has a healthy arm, which he didn’t have last year,” McCaskill said. “Mike Witt is Mike Witt. Don Sutton hasn’t changed. I have areas I can improve in. I don’t see any reason why this staff can’t be better than last year’s.”

It had better . . . especially if the offensive youth movement develops a case of arrested development.

Kirk McCaskill, top, was 17-10 with a 3.36 ERA in 1986. Urbano Lugo started six games as an Angel a season ago.