Langston Puts a Halt to Streak : Angels: Left-hander stops club’s four-game losing streak with a 4-2 victory over Boston to boost his record to 9-2.

Last season, Mark Langston couldn’t stop losing. This season, he has become the Angels’ stopper.

Seven strong innings from Langston and a two-run double by Wally Joyner propelled the Angels to a 4-2 victory over the Red Sox on Monday and ended the team’s four-game losing streak.

Rebounding from a shaky fifth inning, Langston (9-2) won after an Angel loss for the fifth time this season and moved within one victory of matching his 1990 total.

“He controlled the game,” Joyner said of Langston, who gave up six hits and struck out five. “The key was after we scored four in the top of the fifth and they scored two quick runs, he didn’t lose his composure.”

Losing became a habit last season for Langston, whose 17 defeats were the highest total of his career. He attributes his success this season to confidence.

Against the Red Sox, he also had command of his fastball and mastery of his changeup.

“It’s very gratifying,” Langston said. “Last year was a bad year, but this is a different team and a different situation.”

Langston, who has worked into the seventh inning or later in 12 of his 14 starts, left earlier than planned after feeling a twinge in his right ankle during a fifth-inning rundown, but he doesn’t anticipate any problems.

Mark Eichhorn pitched two-thirds of an inning and Bryan Harvey retired the final four hitters to earn his 16th save and help lift the Angels within three games of the first-place Minnesota Twins.

Langston, who has also lost one game and gotten one no-decision in starts that followed an Angel loss, believes he’s off to the best start of his career. Even in 1987, when he won a career-high 19 games for the Seattle Mariners, he accomplished most of that with a strong second-half push.

“I’m throwing more strikes, getting ahead of guys and making them swing at more pitches,” Langston said. “One of the big things last year was that I was getting behind guys a lot.

“I felt very comfortable with all my pitches tonight, and I got ahead of people and was aggressive. I’m not trying to overthrow or overpower people. Our defense is so solid and I have so much confidence in it, it lets me be aggressive and let the ball be put into play.”

The defense justified his confidence in the fifth inning. The Angels took a 4-0 lead off Greg Harris (2-7) in the top of the inning, scoring their first run on successive singles by Ron Tingley, Dick Schofield and Luis Polonia. Joyner’s double to left-center produced two runs--his first runs batted in over the last seven games--and Dave Parker drove him in with a single to left.

But the Red Sox replied quickly. A single by Mike Greenwell and a double by Ellis Burks put runners on second and third for Jack Clark, who sent them home and stirred the crowd of 32,786 when he singled to center on an 0-and-2 pitch.

“Clark was the only guy who was able to catch up to the fastball that was up and away,” Tingley said. “We had a couple guys swing through it, but Clark got on top of it.”

Poised in a situation that last season might have unnerved him, Langston got Tony Pena to ground into a double play begun by third baseman Gary Gaetti.

Luis Rivera prolonged the inning with a hit on a grounder corraled on the edge of the dirt by second baseman Luis Sojo, but Langston’s quick move to first trapped Rivera in a rundown. Langston applied the finishing touch with a lunging tag.

“Luckily, I got out of that just with two,” said Langston, whose .818 winning percentage ranks among the league leaders. “That was a big DP for me. The guys have been making plays behind me.

“I just try to go out there and be a consistent guy for the team.”

His consistency has won him All-Star consideration, a topic Angel Manager Doug Rader discussed with Tony La Russa of the Oakland Athletics, the AL manager.

“There’s no question his credentials are there, but if you consider Chuck (Finley, a 10-game winner) as a real possibility, two guys making it off the same club is pretty remote,” Rader said. “No question, if he continues to pitch as he has, he deserves it.”

That’s an honor beyond even his pinpoint control. “I don’t think about or worry about it,” he said.

After fearing their 13-game trip might begin by being swept in Boston, the Angels left for Milwaukee with a victory and an optimistic outlook.

“Winning tonight was a big lift for us,” Tingley said. “We flat-out got beat here the first two games (9-4 and 13-3 losses) and Kirk McCaskill pitched great to keep it close Sunday (in a 2-0 loss). We’ve got to get back into that pattern where somebody else is a hero every night. Tonight, the hero was Mark Langston.”