Five the Hard Way : The Angels’ Search for a Fifth Starting Pitcher Has Been, Uh, Never-Ending

Give the Angels some credit. Through the years, whenever a rule change or new baseball trend has been thrown their way, they’ve usually reacted by quickly digging in and taking their best hacks at it:

--Free agency. The Angels welcomed the concept with open arms, and open palms, picking up Bobby Grich, Don Baylor and Joe Rudi during one wild eight-day shopping spree in late 1976.

--The designated hitter. The Angels signed Baylor specifically for this role and in 1979, as a DH, Baylor became the franchise’s first--and only--player to be named the American League’s most valuable player.

--The 24-man roster. The year this roster limit went into effect, 1986, the Angels won the title in the AL West and fell but one pitch short of their first World Series.

So far, so good.

But then, some time during the last decade, someone decided that four starting pitchers weren’t enough for a baseball team. Gimme five, he said, reasoning that the extra arm would help save wear and tear on the four others.

That seemed to make sense and, soon, the five-man rotation began popping up in major league cities across the land. Even in Anaheim.

The Angels have been trying to recover ever since.

From Jim Slaton to Ron Romanick to Ray Chadwick to Vern Ruhle to Urbano Lugo to Jerry Reuss, the Angels’ trail of fallen fifth starters has become one of the sorriest sights in either league. Give me your weak of fastball, your stout of ERA and, chances are, the Angels will give him refuge in their starting rotation.

“We’ve never had anybody really jump into the spot,” laments Marcel Lachemann, the Angel pitching coach. “The closest was Ron Romanick, who did a good job his rookie year (1984) but didn’t stay a fifth starter very long. We had a couple guys get hurt and pretty soon, our fifth starter was now our No. 3 or 4 guy. And the fifth starter became our sixth or seventh guy.”

Romanick flamed out by mid-1986, has since relocated in the Milwaukee organization, and the position has been a virtual vacuum ever since. Chadwick went 0-5, Ruhle 1-3. Lugo, the great hope for 1987, lasted just five turns in the rotation before he was dispatched to Edmonton. His final totals: 0-2, 9.32 ERA, 42 hits in 28 innings.

Lugo was invited back to the Angels’ major league camp this spring, but that’s about all. The fifth starter of the future has quickly slipped into the past. When the Angels broke camp and moved to Palm Springs last week, Lugo was not among them.

Meanwhile, three men have resumed their quests to finally take the fifth and make something of it. It is a disparate field, an all-comers’ meet, consisting of something old, Jack Lazorko; something borrowed, Joe Johnson, and something new, Chuck Finley.

Lazorko, who will be 32 by opening day, is a holdover from last season’s dial-a-starter circus, in which he shuttled back and forth from Edmonton to Anaheim, from long relief to the rotation. Overall, he started 11 games. In them, he compiled a record of 3-5 with an ERA of 5.17.

Johnson, 26, is basically on trial loan from the Toronto Blue Jays. The Angels drafted him off Toronto’s unprotected list for $50,000 last winter and have through spring training to decide if he’s worth keeping. If Johnson doesn’t make the Angels’ 24-man roster, Toronto has the option of buying him back for $25,000.

Finley, 25, has started three games in his professional baseball career. In two seasons with the Angels, mainly as a mop-up reliever, he went 5-8 with a 4.20 ERA and no saves. Last year, he appeared in 35 games--and the Angels went 4-31 in those games.

So, who’s the favorite?

Finley, of course.

“I guess if you’d have to name a front-runner, it’d be Finley,” Lachemann said. “He’s a tad ahead of the other two.”

Why?

“Because he’s left-handed.”

Yes, it is as simple as that. The projected first four of the Angels’ 1988 rotation are all right-handed--Mike Witt, Kirk McCaskill, Dan Petry and Willie Fraser. Seeking a little variety, and with no left-handed starting candidates in camp, the Angels are asking Finley to make the conversion from reliever to starter--and hoping.

“If you don’t have a quality left-hander, you’d be better off going with five good right-handed starters,” Lachemann said. “But there are just some clubs that are obviously better to pitch left-handers against.”

The Angels are pulling for Finley to make it. And the numbers are in his favor. Thus far, Finley is 2-0 in four appearances. He has allowed 16 hits and 5 runs in 16 innings, good for a 2.81 ERA.

No. 2 is Johnson. In four appearances, he is 0-0 with a 4.50 ERA, yielding 16 hits in his first 10 innings.

And the longshot, as he has been throughout most of his career, is Lazorko. Struggling mightily with this year’s new, higher strike zone, Lazorko, a sinkerball specialist, has seen his ERA soar to 6.97 in four spring outings. His record is 1-2.

To the winner goes the dubious reward of picking up where Lugo left off. And to the losers? Maybe the 10th spot in the bullpen, or maybe a ticket back to Canada--Toronto for Johnson, Edmonton for Lazorko.

Taking a closer look at the field:

WIN: CHUCK FINLEY

In their grandest strokes of imagination, the Angels look at Chuck Finley and they envision a left-handed Mike Witt. They note the same tall, lean build--at 6 feet 6 inches, Finley is an inch shorter than Witt--the same long legs that drive off the rubber; the same mitt-popping fastball.

They would gladly settle for half the results.

“He has the potential to be a big winner,” Lachemann said. “He has the physical tools to do it. But, he doesn’t have much experience. He did not come from a big-time college program (he’s from Northeast Louisiana State) and he’s only had about 50 innings of minor league baseball (actually 41). He never pitched in double A or triple A.

“So, obviously, we’ve got quite a job to do with him.’

The Angels, who drafted Finley in 1985 and promoted him to the big league roster in May of 1986, first toyed with the idea of making Finley a starter last September. The season was already a mess, and Manager Gene Mauch never warmed to the idea of using Finley in late-inning save-or-lose situations, so why not?

Finley started three games and went 0-1 with a 6.19 ERA. To the Angels, it wasn’t enough of a sampling to prove anything--except that Finley needed more work as a starter.

So, it was off to the Dominican winter league.

“The big thing was, he needed to get some innings in,” Lachemann said. “He also needed to gain some confidence. . . . He pitched in a lot of losing games last year, but he was not responsible for all those losses. It’s come to the point now where he has to feel he can handle pitching in a winning ballgame.”

When you pitch in 35 games, most of them blowouts, and the Angels lose 31, getting that winning feeling may be easier said than done.

“I knew I was better than that,” Finley said. “It was just a matter of putting me in with games on the line.”

Finley rarely got that chance because the Angels doubted his mental makeup was right for short relief. A laid-back guy who speaks in a soft Southern drawl, Finley is a nice-guy type--closer to Gary Lucas in temperament than, say, Donnie Moore.

So, if Finley is not right for closing games, the Angels reason, maybe he can better handle opening them.

Finley admits he’s better suited to a starting role.

“I like it a lot better than relieving,” he said. “You have a better chance to control the ballgame. In some of the games I got in, the only thing you can do is try to keep the other guy from scoring more. This way, it’s zip-zip when you get in.

“And, you have more time to prepare yourself. Starting, you have a couple of days to think about what you’re going to do.”

Pitching for Cookie Rojas and La Romana of the Dominican League, Finley got acclimated to his new assignment by starting 12 games, completing 2, and compiling a 3-4 record with a 2.92 ERA. He finally settled on a comfortable delivery--before 1987, Finley had never pitched out of a full windup--and, more important in the Angels’ eyes, he showed some development.

“He came back a far better pitcher than when he left,” Lachemann said. “He came back with a different look in his eye. He feels he can do the job now, and that he’s not here just because he’s left-handed.

“From the progress he’s made so far, we’re encouraged. But there’s still a ways to go.”

PLACE: JOE JOHNSON

The Angels have tried this route before. Remember Carl Willis?

OK, so you don’t. That’s understandable.

During December of 1985, Willis was selected by the Angels in the Rule V Major League draft--basically, a garage sale of players left off their respective teams’ 40-man rosters. Willis, a pitcher in the Cincinnati organization, was left unprotected by the Reds and was bought, for $50,000, by the Angels.

Willis trained with the Angels during the spring of 1986, without making an impression. The Angels couldn’t guarantee they would keep Willis on their 40-man roster the entire season, either, so, in accordance to the rules, they had to offer Willis back to Cincinnati at half-price. The Reds accepted, and the Willis experiment was history.

Two years later, the Angels are gambling another $25,000 on another pitcher left unprotected by his former club. The difference here is that Johnson, lost amid the wealth of starting pitching in the Toronto organization, requested he be left unprotected.

“The Jays are stacked as far as pitchers go, and I didn’t see me getting much of an opportunity there,” Johnson said. “I asked (Toronto General Manager) Pat Gillick to trade me. When that didn’t happen, I asked him to take me off the roster.”

This time a year ago, Johnson was regarded as a pitcher of promise, the No. 5 starter in the Blue Jays’ rotation. He had gone to Toronto in a mid-1986 trade with Atlanta and finished 7-2 with the Blue Jays. Overall, he was 13-9 in 1986, respectable numbers for a pitcher in his first full big league season.

But a strained muscle in his right forearm dimmed those prospects last April. For a pitcher who throws breaking balls, this injury is especially damaging and Johnson floundered. “It got to the point where I couldn’t throw my stuff,” he said. When he slumped to 3-5 with a 5.13 ERA, Toronto demoted him to Syracuse. There he went 6-4 with a 4.26 ERA.

Have the Angels again invested in damaged goods?

Johnson insists that his arm is sound.

“I spent the whole winter strengthening the arm, lifting weights and stretching,” he said. “I’ve had no problems with it so far. Right now, I’m throwing as well as I did in ’86.”

Whether that lands him a spot in the Angels’ rotation in ’88 depends a lot on Finley. But Johnson believes he has a future here.

“I think I have a good opportunity here,” he said. “And that’s the big thing. I do have an opportunity again.”

SHOW: JACK LAZORKO

A pitcher of limited natural ability, Lazorko tries to compensate with unlimited confidence.

Last year, he deemed himself “the best-fielding pitcher in baseball.” And in case you missed any of his Rogie Vachon impressions around the mound in 1987, he was probably right.

This spring, during the opening days of workouts, Lazorko assessed the Angels’ starting pitching prospects and proclaimed: “I gotta be the fifth starter, right?”

Lazorko’s bid to break into the rotation has stalled at the gate. In 10 innings thus far, he has allowed 16 hits, 11 runs, 8 of them earned, and 4 walks. Not the best way to gain an edge on the competition when you’re No. 3 going in.

“I fully expect to be there on opening day,” Lazorko insists, still plugging away. “There are a lot of roles I can play. I can start, I can be a long man, I can be a middle man, I can be a short man, if needed. But hopefully, it’ll be as the fifth starter.

“You’re always looking for guys who are durable, and I know I can do it. Of the 11 games I started last year, (in) eight of them, I got into the seventh inning. I could’ve easily won 10 games last year.”

As it was, Lazorko won five with the Angels. He was 3-5 as a starter and 2-1 as a reliever. After 10 years in the minor leagues, those were the first five major league victories of Lazorko’s career.

To his credit, Lazorko did work a lot of innings in a limited role--117, fourth on the staff. But he also yielded 20 home runs--an average of one every six innings.

“I’ve given up some home runs,” Lazorko said. “But the ball was jumping last year. The ball was really flying out of Anaheim Stadium. I know I wasn’t the Lone Ranger in that department.”

Lazorko blames his spring struggles on the new strike zone, which has been raised to the armpits--or, at least the umpires’ interpretation of it.

“I’m a low-ball pitcher, and the umpires are still adjusting to the changing strike zone,” he said. “I’ve got to get the strike at the knees, but they’re not calling it.

” . . . I know I’m battling to get a spot on the staff. No question. But I’ve got some things in my corner. I know I’ll be ready when the season starts. I’m building up to things.”

Maybe Lazorko can get more batters to hit the ball up the middle.

Winning the Angels’ fifth-starter derby is only half the battle. Or, perhaps, not even that. Turning it into something more than an automatic defeat every fifth day is a challenge the Angels haven’t really met since 1984.

Finley, who was still in college during 1984, is well aware of the history at work here. He’s heard about the tradition, over and over and over.

“I know about the trouble the Angels have had with their fifth starter,” Finley said. “They haven’t been able to find the right person to fill the gap and stick with him.

“I’m going to stop that, though.”