Yankees Solve Langston, 5-2 : Baseball: After beating New York last Sunday, Angel pitcher has control trouble. Rader says his team has no excuse for loss.

If he was tired, it was born of frustration, not fatigue.

Doug Rader was tired of seeing his team unable to muster much of an offense, and he wouldn’t accept the obvious excuse that the Angels might have been exhausted after a 13-game trip and unable to do better than five hits against the New York Yankees on Friday night.

The Angels been running on near-empty offensively all season, and their 5-2 loss to the Yankees emphasized how low their fuel level is.

“I won’t accept (fatigue). If you’re tired, you suck it up,” Rader said after the Angels’ sixth loss in their last nine games and 11th in their last 16. “You have no right to be fatigued. Possibly mentally fatigued, but physically fatigued, not these people here. I doubt that very few of these people here have been physically fatigued. Sometimes you might think you are, but you never are.”

They had to be tired of having little to show for their at-bats against Dave LaPoint (2-2), who last Sunday lasted only two innings against the Angels, giving up four runs (one earned).

This time, after Luis Polonia tripled to lead off the first inning and scored on Devon White’s sacrifice fly, the Angels had only two more hits off LaPoint in five innings and only one more run against the Yankees, who had lost their previous five games.

“If everybody did what Luis Polonia did,” Rader said, “we would have scored nine runs and won.”

They scored one more, when Chili Davis walked and Dante Bichette doubled in the ninth off Dave Righetti, the fourth New York pitcher. By then, they had squandered a bases-loaded, two-out chance in the fourth, leaving them one for 10 in bases-loaded situations this season, and the Yankees had benefited from Jesse Barfield’s three-run home run in the sixth off Mark Langston (2-2), who had earned the victory in that game against the Yankees last Sunday.

“It was the same old David,” said Rader, who was a coach with the Chicago White Sox when LaPoint pitched there. “He changes speeds, turns the ball over and sinks it. He gives you the opportunity to get yourself out and that’s exactly what we did for him.”

LaPoint was grateful that the Angels accepted his invitation and continually were retired on groundouts this time.

“It was different last week because I had a passed ball (which set up a three-run Angel rally in the second inning) and I instantly went and tried to make too perfect pitches and they were taking them,” LaPoint said. “This time, I relaxed and threw my pitches.

“Doug knows me. He’s seen my stuff. He knows if he’s got a chance to bury me, he has to. My job is to just keep the game close.”

Langston, who went eight innings, was bent on the same mission but could not accomplish it. The two second-inning walks he issued were an indication that he was in for some problems, and he gave up a run in the third on a walk, a stolen base and a run-scoring single by Don Mattingly, one of the few left-handed hitters who owns a good (.289) career average against him.

“If you flirt with danger as much as he was, one bad pitch is going to happen,” Rader said. “That’s not to belittle him, but when you’re that wild and not able to control your pitches any better than that, problems are almost inevitable. You can’t avoid danger if you put yourself in that position over and over again.”

The Yankees chipped away for another run in the fifth, using a walk, a stolen base and a run-scoring single by Roberto Kelly. Then they pulled away in the sixth. With one out, Langston hit Steve Balboni and then gave up a single to Dave Winfield. Barfield’s home run to right-center came on a fastball down and away, and it left the Angels too far down to recover.

“I wasn’t getting my fastball over and that’s the big key for me,” said Langston, who had not given up more than four earned runs in any of his previous four starts this season. “I felt pretty lucky, considering how wild I was in the first couple innings. I never really got into a groove until after the damage was done and then I settled down and got ahead of the hitters. It was too late by then.

“I felt rested. That wasn’t the problem. It was location.”

He might have been assuming too much blame. Given the Angels’ .233 team average, they are not likely to overcome many deficits.

Or build many leads.

Angel Notes

Reggie Jackson, now a TV commentator on Channel 5, gave Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield a hard time while the Yankees were doing their pregame stretching. “So you’re a part-timer now,” Jackson began, as Winfield, who missed the 1989 season after undergoing back surgery, did his calisthenics. “You know what happens when they make you the DH. That’s how they ran me out of baseball. . . . Don’t leave anything on the warning track tonight because you know what people are going to say. They’re going to say, ‘Years ago, that would have gone out.’ ” The other Yankees smiled, giving Jackson more fuel. “The guys that are laughing the hardest are thinking the same thing,” Jackson said. “Oh, and you know I need you for an interview?” Jackson’s jesting may have inspired Winfield. He ended a career-worst 0-for-23 streak in the fourth with a single.

To the delight of Angel newcomer Luis Polonia, Donnie Hill gave Polonia uniform No. 22--which means Polonia can keep the ornate gold “22” charm he wears around his neck instead of selling it to Hill. “I figured I’d have to change my whole wardrobe if he gave it to me,” said Hill, who took 18. Polonia was even more delighted to be in the starting lineup Friday against a left-hander. “It’s great. That’s telling me I don’t have to think about whether I’m playing or not,” he said. “That was the tough thing for me--I’d be home and then come to the game and see I’m not in the lineup. Now I don’t have to think about it or read the paper to see who’s pitching. I’m going to be there and I’m going to do my job day by day.”

Mark Langston and his wife, Michelle, will provide the voices for two characters in an animated action-adventure TV series, “Captain Planet and the Planeteers.”