ANGELS : Two Innings Don’t Provide Answer for Blyleven

Bert Blyleven will turn 40 next month, and his right arm has 4,837 innings of major league mileage on it. But as he waited to test his surgically repaired right shoulder in Sunday’s B game against the Padres, Blyleven was as jittery as a rookie.

“Today was the first day I was competing against somebody other than intra-squad games. I was a little nervous in anticipation,” he said. “The first inning went real well. In the second inning, I just got some balls up. You’re (ticked) off when you don’t pitch the way you want to, but that’s the competitiveness in me.”

While he has plenty of combativeness left, the strength and zip remaining in his right arm are in question. After he pitched a hitless first inning and gave up three hits and three runs in the second inning, the answer was still unclear.

Brian Dorsett’s two-run home run in the second didn’t bother Blyleven, who has given up 413 homers. He was looking for sharpness in his curveball and freshness in his arm, and he saw both.

“The home run was a fastball I tried to sink away. It had nothing to do with my arm, just location,” Blyleven said after the game, a 3-3 tie called after eight innings.

“I feel I’m going to be ready (to start the season). My arm strength is coming back. I just need the innings, that’s all.”

He also needs to make rapid progress. He is not worried about his velocity--”I haven’t been concerned about the radar gun the last 10 years,” he said--but he can’t afford to backslide.

“He threw the ball a little bit better today,” pitching coach Marcel Lachemann said. “He’s on the upswing. It’s just going to have to continue.”

Blyleven will continue his comeback Thursday, when he faces the Padres in another B game at Mesa’s Gene Autry Park. He had only one complaint Sunday. “My calf is killing me more than my arm,” said Blyleven, whose leg tightened while running. “When you’re getting old, you start falling apart.”

Angel Notes

In the A game, Jim Abbott gave up four consecutive two-out hits in the third inning as the Padres won, 4-0. The Angels have lost 10 consecutive spring games, including their last seven against the Padres.

Right-hander Scott Lewis, a leading candidate to step into the rotation if Bert Blyleven isn’t healthy, pitched three perfect innings Sunday and left-hander Floyd Bannister gave up two singles in two innings. Angel relievers have pitched 13 consecutive scoreless innings since Matt Keough gave up five runs in Friday’s exhibition opener.

A double by Lee Stevens and singles by Jack Howell and Max Venable were the Angels’ only hits in the A game. . . . Dante Bichette, who is trying a more open stance to improve his quickness, was 0 for 3 and is hitless in five at-bats. . . . Left-hander Mark Langston, who was hit in the right arm by a line drive in during Thursday’s intra-squad game, will start against the Padres today at Arizona State University in Tempe.