No Meeting, No Mercy for Angel

When Joe Grahe and Dante Bichette met for lunch Tuesday, they eagerly anticipated meeting again, in uniform, Tuesday night.

The second encounter never came off. Bichette, the former Angel, was hitting eighth in the Brewers’ batting order. Grahe, making his first start of the season for the Angels, was removed after giving up five hits and two walks to Milwaukee’s first seven batters.

“There’ll be other times,” Grahe said of his missed meeting with Bichette. “There will be other times.”

Trying for the first time to fill the fifth starting spot in the Angels’ rotation, Grahe was thumped by the Brewers for seven runs in Milwaukee’s 10-6 victory at County Stadium.

Although the Angels stirred for five runs in the fifth against left-hander Ted Higuera (2-2) and sent Wally Joyner to the plate as the potential tying run in the eighth, the early deficit was insurmountable.

“We tried to chip away,” shortstop Dick Schofield said. “We’ve scored more than seven runs in a game before. We battled our way back and just came up a little short.”

The defeat was the Angels’ fifth in six games and left them still at a loss for a reliable fifth starter. Grahe (0-1) probably will get several more chances, despite his performance Tuesday night.

In that regard, it was, at least, consistent. The three pitchers used by the Angels in the fifth spot--Scott Lewis, Fernando Valenzuela and Grahe--are a combined 1-8. They have given up 83 hits and 50 earned runs in 51 2/3 innings, for an earned-run average of 8.71. That doesn’t include Grahe’s two relief stints. The only victory for the three was by Lewis on April 18, 7-1 over the Oakland Athletics.

“It is a concern, no question,” Manager Doug Rader said. “We’ve tried three different things. We’ll continue to work at it until we get it right.”

Nothing went right for Grahe, starting with Paul Molitor’s leadoff home run. Jim Gantner and B.J. Surhoff followed with singles, Grahe walked Robin Yount on a full count, and Greg Vaughn kept it rolling with a two-run single to right.

Grahe walked Franklin Stubbs, also on a full-count pitch, and gave up a two-run double to Willie Randolph before leaving.

“You give up a leadoff home run, you usually say, ‘It’s finished, it’s over with,’ but they just got the hits,” Grahe said. “Every pitcher you talk to has had a day like this.

“I can take it one of two ways. I can retreat and go into a shell and ruin the next three weeks or month of my season, or I can brush it off and do the things that have made me successful. It’s part of maturing as a pitcher.”

The Brewers’ seven-run first represented the third time in five games an Angel opponent has scored seven in an inning. The Red Sox did it twice, in the seventh inning Friday and in the first inning Saturday. It was also the second time in four games an Angel starter failed to get out of the first inning, following Chuck Finley’s two-thirds of an inning at Boston in a 13-3 loss Saturday.

Those memories and the sight of Grahe’s outing didn’t change Rader’s mind about the quality of his pitching staff.

“You can’t lose sight of the good job all the pitchers have done,” he said. “The obvious thing is to look at this negatively, but this is more abnormal than a trend.”

The Angels scored five runs in the fifth to close within two. An RBI-double by Joyner, a two-run single by Gary Gaetti and a two-run homer by Dave Winfield rocked Higuera, who had shut out the Angels over six innings last week at Anaheim Stadium but barely got the final out to finish the minimum five innings Tuesday.

“They had to be nervous all the time,” Winfield said of the Brewers. “They could have coasted, but we chased Higuera, who’s a good pitcher, and made them nervous all game.”

Not too nervous to score two more runs in the bottom of the fifth against Mike Fetters, who did a creditable job over 4 1/3 innings in his first appearance of the season. Eighth-inning singles by Dave Parker, Junior Felix and Luis Sojo cut Milwaukee’s lead to four, and a walk to Schofield brought Joyner up against Bill Plesac as the potential tying run. But Joyner struck out, ending the Angels’ hopes.

Grahe, who had bought his parents a satellite dish so they could watch Tuesday’s game at home in West Palm Beach, Fla., hopes to give his folks a better show next time.

“My father’s a softball player and he knows you’re going to have games like this,” he said. “He was the first one to tell me (to come back strong).

“I look at it this way: It can only get better. This is about as rock-bottom as you can get.”