McCaskill Is Thrown a Curve : Angels: His pitch to Boggs is no surprise, and Boggs singles in runs for 2-0 victory for Red Sox.

After taking two fastballs for strikes, Wade Boggs was sure Kirk McCaskill would throw him a curveball with a 1-and-2 count, two out and the bases loaded in a scoreless game.

“He’s got a good curveball, and he uses it in tough situations,” said Boggs, a career .346 hitter and five-time American League batting champion.

Boggs got his curveball and hit it into right-center field for a single, producing the only runs the Red Sox needed for a 2-0 victory that lifted them a half-game ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays and into the AL East lead.

“I tried to go back-door with it,” McCaskill said. “Boggs hits everything the other way, and if you can make him hit the ball to right field, you have a better chance of getting him out.”

In losing their fourth consecutive game--their longest losing streak of the season--and absorbing their seventh loss in nine games, the Angels mustered only five singles off left-hander Tom Bolton (6-4) and one off Jeff Reardon. Boston’s closer yielded a single to Gary Gaetti, but ended the game by striking out right-handed hitter Bobby Rose with left handed-hitting Dave Parker on deck to bat for Donnie Hill.

“I sort of expected them to hit for Rose,” said Reardon, who is three saves from becoming the first major league pitcher to earn 20 or more in 10 consecutive seasons. “I’m not saying I wanted Parker there. He’s a good hitter.”

Parker, hitting .199, expressed no qualms over Angel Manager Doug Rader’s strategy.

“Bobby’s been swinging the bat pretty good,” Parker said. “He came in (Saturday) and hit a double off the wall and had a hit in his last at-bat. Doug made his decision.”

Rader decided to take the loss as symptomatic of a downward cycle he hopes will be brief.

“Our whole offense right now is pretty stagnant,” Rader said. “Unfortunately, everyone has fallen into it, but they’ll bounce back. They’re pros. We hit into some double plays today that hurt us and they got a two-out hit today, and that was the difference in the game.

“(McCaskill) pitched great. But when things are going rough, like they are now for us, you don’t get the two-out hits like they did.”

Jack Clark opened the fifth inning by lining a shot off the left-field wall, holding at first when Luis Polonia played the carom well. Clark took second on Tony Pena’s ground out, and McCaskill (6-7) walked Luis Rivera. Jody Reed flied to left, but McCaskill walked Carlos Quintana to load the bases.

“The walk to Quintana was a bad walk,” McCaskill said. “On Boggs, I was really trying to mix it up. I made a bad pitch on the 1-and-2 count--I left it up a hair and it wasn’t really a snapper.

“Pitching a complete game is one satisfying point. I did want to pitch late into the game,” added McCaskill, whose last complete game was Sept. 9, 1990 in a 3-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. “But I’d rather have pitched a shorter amount of time and won.”

The Angels have been shut out three times in a row by left-handed starters--Detroit’s Frank Tanana, on June 7, and Milwaukee’s Ted Higuera, last Wednesday, preceded Bolton--and they scored one run May 31 against Toronto left-hander David Wells. Before that, the Angels won 12 decisions against left-handers.

The absence of Lance Parrish, placed on the disabled list Sunday because of a strained muscle in his right forearm, depletes their right-handed power and has contributed to their recent woes against left-handers. But the problems are more widespread than that. The Angels are hitting .183 (23 for 126) in the last four games and threatened only once against Bolton.

That was in the third inning when Polonia, on second base after his 23rd steal of the season, tried to score on Luis Sojo’s chopper to Bolton and was thrown out at home at the end of a double play. The Angels put runners on first and second in the fifth inning, but Polonia ended the inning by grounding to shortstop.

“We just haven’t had guys going well,” Rader said. “Luis Polonia has cooled off, Wally (Joyner) has cooled off. . . . We’ve got a guy in scoring position and two out and Luis up (in the fifth inning), and you think that’s when things might get going because he does his best work in those situations. But that’s how things go when you’re not going well.”

Things are going well for the Red Sox, who have won their last three games and seven of nine.

“The first two games, we scored a lot of runs (in 9-4 and 13-3 victories), and today we did it with pitching and defense,” Boggs said. “This is a nice way to win.”

* TWINS’ STREAK: Minnesota moves into first place in the AL West with its 15th victory in a row. C8