Read It and Weep: Angels Need Help

A new baseball book arrived in the mail the other day and its pages on the Angels suggest that Mike Port is spending entirely too much time eating and sleeping these days.

Do the Angels need an outfielder?

According to Tom Seaver, the Angels need an offense.

For the past two years, Seaver has lent his name to a collection of scouting reports that mince few words and many reputations. Seaver’s 1990 Scouting Notebook, published by The Sporting News, offers one-page critiques of 360 major league players, based on interviews with scouts and front office personnel, and ranks them by position, exposing flaws, warts and weaknesses.

The Angel pitching acquits itself well, which is no surprise. Chuck Finley, Mark Langston and Jim Abbott are all ranked among the American League’s top 10 left-handed starters and Bert Blyleven is No. 8 among right-handers.

But the Angel batting order takes a beating. Of the eight regular position players, only two--Wally Joyner and Lance Parrish--are ranked above ninth against their American League peers. Brian Downing is sixth among designated hitters.

How the Angels didn’t score--and some selected comments from the book:

First Base: Wally Joyner

Rank: Fourth.

“Joyner is a classic victim of great expectations. But it’s his own fault. When he blasted 56 home runs and drove in 217 runs over his first two major league seasons, he set a pace that was too high for his talent level. . . . ‘I think we all found out that he is not the prototype power hitter we thought he was going to be,’ one scout said. ‘He’s still a very good first baseman, but he’s certainly not among the elite.’ ”

Second Base: Johnny Ray

Rank: Ninth (behind Jerry Browne and Nelson Liriano, to name two).

“His defensive flaws are numerous: He never seems to be in position, he has stiff hands, he has difficulty turning the double play and he has a weak arm. . . . But the Angels can live with those deficiencies because Ray is an offensive machine. . . . (Ray) figures to continue his consistent production for several more years. The Angels, weak defense or not, realize that Ray has been a key figure in their recent rise to challenger status in the tough American League West Division.”

Third Base: Jack Howell

Rank: Ninth (behind Craig Worthington and Brook Jacoby).

“He is a self-made player who gets the most out of his ability. But some question whether that is enough to keep him in the regular lineup at the major league level and the Angels, understandably, would like more production from the third baseman. . . . Howell strikes out much too often (125 times last season, 130 times in 1988) and he has a horrible time hitting fellow left-handers (a .140 mark last year, a .123 average in 1987), suggesting that he might be better off in a platoon situation.”

Shortstop: Dick Schofield

Rank: Ninth (behind Jody Reed and Greg Gagne).

“Schofield is a low-ball hitter who can’t stop chasing high fastballs. . . . A man with limited power (his best home-run season was 13 in 1986), Schofield will hit a homer and then spend the next two weeks trying to hit another. That results in far too many fly balls for a hitter who should be trying to keep it on the ground. . . . He just can’t seem to make offensive adjustments and scouts now believe he never will become a consistently productive big-league hitter.”

Outfield: Devon White.

Rank: 11th (behind Dave Henderson).

“The young switch-hitter is a wild swinger who makes life easy on opposing pitchers. . . . Because of his excellent power potential, pitchers rarely will throw White a fastball. Instead, they feed him a steady diet of breaking balls and off-speed pitches--and they don’t even have to throw them in the strike zone. . . . White is one of the best pure athletes in the American League and one of its top underachievers. The Angels, once convinced that this slender 27-year-old would develop into a superstar, now are growing impatient.”

Outfield: Chili Davis.

Rank: 14th (behind Ken Griffey Jr.).

“Considering his shaky defense, Davis could make the transition to designated hitter earlier than others. . . . He’s still an undisciplined hitter who is susceptible to strikeouts. Over the last three seasons, Davis has fanned 109, 118 and 109 times. Pitchers have some success with fastballs above the letters, but he’ll convert their mistakes into extra bases.”

Outfield: Claudell Washington.

Unranked.

“Left-handers can prevent Washington from driving the ball by changing speeds and throwing breaking balls in the dirt. Over the last two seasons, he has hit just one of his 24 home runs against left-handers and had only five RBIs against them in 1989.”

Designated Hitter: Brian Downing.

Rank: Sixth.

“Downing’s bat has slowed considerably and hard throwers now can get their fastball past him. Pitchers who change speeds can make him look foolish because he is a notorious guess hitter who tends to overswing. . . . Perhaps the most telling statistics of his 1989 season were his 56 walks and 87 strikeouts--almost the opposite of what you would normally expect. It wasn’t too many years ago that Downing was so proficient at drawing walks and getting on base that then-California Manager Gene Mauch used him as a leadoff hitter.”

Catcher: Lance Parrish.

Rank: Second.

“No longer the power threat that he was in Detroit, where he averaged 30 home runs from 1982 through ‘85, he still is dangerous when he gets a pitch that allows him to extend his massive arms. . . . With advancing age, the 33-year-old Parrish has become vulnerable to right-handed pitchers who can get ahead in the count and tempt him with low breaking pitches away. . . . Parrish is so slow that infielders can play him extremely deep and cut off many potential hits.”

Hardly angelic verses. If that’s the book on the Angels, Port ought to be reaching out and touching every general manager in the book. Get thee to a Rolodex.

The Angels need help and they need it soon.

You could look it up.