Lugo, Fraser Have Work Cut Out New Angel Pitchers Reduced to Spot Starters This Month

If you want to know what’s up with Urbano Lugo and Willie Fraser, the new faces in the Angels’ pitching rotation, first take a look at their ERAs.

Lugo’s has risen with every start--from 6.75 to 7.30 to 7.81 to its current 9.28. Giving up three-run homers in consecutive innings, as Lugo managed during his last outing, is one way of maintaining such a stirring pace.

Fraser, the 22-year-old pride of the bullpen for a few weeks, was 1-0 with 1 save and a 1.46 earned-run average before the Kirk McCaskill emergency developed. Fraser was thrust into the rotation and, since then, his ERA has risen to 6.00, the result of four home runs and seven walks in two starts.

Last week, the Angel pitching staff completed one of its rockiest stretches in recent memory--allowing 59 runs in 7 games. Fraser and Lugo combined to start four games in that span. The final scores, all Angel losses, were 8-7, 10-5, 12-4 and 12-3.

What was that about the Angels’ reservoir of young pitching talent? What was that about Lugo and Fraser being the best and the brightest?

“Everything is going bad now,” Lugo says.

Adds Fraser: “Everybody has their ups and downs. It’s going to take a little time. I’m still getting used to major league hitters. . . . But the Angels have trust in my stuff. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t keep me here.”

That trust, however, has been shaken by recent events. The first week of May may be too soon to panic, as Manager Gene Mauch has suggested, but it isn’t too early to begin tinkering with the rotation. If all goes according to the way Mauch has drawn it out, Lugo and Fraser will be reduced to spot starters for the rest of the month.

Mike Witt will pitch on three days’ rest Wednesday in Milwaukee so Mauch can set up a pitching schedule that will have Witt, John Candelaria and Don Sutton starting 17 games in a stretch of 22.

“The kids will split the other five,” Mauch said.

That may be one way for the Angels to temporarily cut their losses. It certainly is difficult to contend for first place when you’re getting blown out twice every five days.

But it is, at best, only a short-term solution. Once the days off start dwindling in June, the Angels will have to resort again to a five-man rotation--40% of which has yet to extend a start beyond the fifth inning.

When that is mentioned in the Angel clubhouse, McCaskill’s name surfaces and resurfaces.

When McCaskill went out with a shoulder injury that could sideline him for three months, Fraser was pried out of the bullpen and Lugo suddenly became a key figure on the club.

“It’s tough to break up the chain of command,” McCaskill admitted the other day. “I’m sure Willie was comfortable in the bullpen. The continuity was broken up.”

McCaskill, however, may yet serve the Angels, as a model. As a rookie in 1985, he was 0-4 after his first six starts. “I was one start away from getting sent down,” he said.

Instead, McCaskill held the defending World Series champion Detroit Tigers hitless for 6 innings and earned a reprieve. He then went 12-8 the rest of the season.

“That’s why you have to be patient with young pitchers,” Angel pitching coach Marcel Lachemann said. “McCaskill was fighting for his life, too. As long as they’re making progress. . . . “

Earned-run averages of 9.27 and 6.00 would seem to indicate regression, but Lachemann said: “I haven’t given up on them. It’s probably more frustrating to me than them. If the ability is there, it’s my job to get it out of them. And it’s there.”

Lachemann points to Lugo’s last start as an example. Lugo opened the game by striking out Boston’s Wade Boggs and Marty Barrett. “Those are two of the tougher guys in the league to strike out,” he said.

Then, in the second inning, Lugo walked two batters and allowed a two-run double by rookie Ellis Burks. In the fourth, he walked another hitter, setting up a three-run homer by Boggs--on an 0-and-2 pitch. And in the fifth, he walked one more hitter--and served up one more three-run homer, this one by Dwight Evans.

“It’s not like there’s no hope,” Lachemann said. “He still shows us signs that, if he gets into the right program, he can win. The approach he took into the first inning, he has to maintain that.”

Lugo agreed that much of the problem stems from lapses in concentration.

“This is the first time I’ve ever gone through something like this,” he said. “Not in the minor leagues, never. I keep making bad pitches at bad moments. I get two outs--and then, a single. I walk somebody--and then, a home run. The bases on balls (15 in 22 innings) have really hurt me.”

With Fraser, the problem has had more to do with transition.

“There’s a big change in attitude, going from relief pitching to starting,” Mauch said. “Willie relieved six or seven times and then he’s starting. As a reliever, you’re thinking, ‘I’m gonna go as hard as I can go for one inning or two.’ As a starter, Willie had lost some of that aggressiveness.

“He has to keep that idea of going hard for one inning, and then two, and then three and let’s see if we can get six out of him.”

Fraser came to the Angels with a rare billing--a power pitcher with impeccable control. His fastball has been clocked at 95 m.p.h. and last year in the minor leagues, Fraser allowed just 37 walks in 164 innings.

Since becoming an Angel starter, however, Fraser has walked seven in nine innings--including five in last Thursday’s 12-4 loss to Detroit.

“I can account for that by being too control-oriented,” Fraser said. “I usually go in there and challenge the hitters. But I’ve almost been pitching scared.

“In Minnesota (where Fraser allowed three home runs in four innings), I was giving the hitters too much credit. I got away from what I was doing in the pen and Lach and I have talked about it. I have to go right at the hitters, be aggressive. That’s my game.”

In the month ahead, Lugo and Fraser will have plenty of time to contemplate what went wrong in April. This week, the Angels will skip Lugo’s turn in the rotation and delay Fraser’s next start until Saturday. Of the five games the two of them will start in May, it’s conceivable that Fraser could start four and Lugo only one.

A setback for Lugo?

“Yeah,” Lugo said. “But I think by going back to the bullpen, I can work on some things. I’ve been working on a slider, a new pitch this year, and I still need to throw more strikes with it. I’ll get a chance to work on my control.”

Said Fraser: “Urbano’s going through a real tough time. He pitched all winter and all spring. Maybe he’s going through a ‘dead-arm’ period right now.

“I’m sure he’s frustrated, as I am a little bit. We’re both taking our lumps right now. But that’s not to say we can’t come back and win five games in a row. McCaskill struggled for a while, and then adjusted.”

So what does McCaskill have to say about the situation?

“I’m not one to sit here and judge one’s ability,” McCaskill said. “I don’t perceive myself as enough of a veteran to give out advice.”

Still . . .

“I’d just say to them, ‘Relax,’ ” McCaskill said. “For me, that’s what did it. You have to get to the point where you stop thinking that every pitch is the turning point in your career.”

Food for thought as Lugo and Fraser count the days until the next time they appear on the mound for the Angels.