No Relief as Angels Fall, 2-1 : Baseball: Harvey takes over for McCaskill in the ninth and gives up a two-run homer to Oriole rookie Martinez.

Chito Martinez knew little about Bryan Harvey before he faced the Angel reliever for the first time Monday.

“Just that he throws a fastball and a forkball, he throws hard, and his forkball is his out pitch,” Martinez said.

When Harvey came in to pitch the ninth inning, he came armed with a little knowledge about the rookie outfielder.

“We talked about him before the game,” said Harvey, who got the first two outs of the inning before giving up a single to Randy Milligan. “I threw him a fastball and I just tried to keep it away from him to see what he could do with it, and it got back over the middle of the plate.”

Harvey’s knowledge of Martinez now includes the rookie’s home run capabilities, which resulted in a 2-1 Angel loss. Martinez slammed a 1-and-0 fastball into the right-field seats to wipe out an impressive effort by Angel starter Kirk McCaskill at Anaheim Stadium.

Losing so suddenly intensified the Angels’ distress over losing for the eighth time in nine games and falling five games behind the Minnesota Twins.

“It rips your heart out every time you lose a game in the ninth inning,” catcher Ron Tingley said.

The crowd of 22,896, which greeted Harvey’s arrival with cheers, booed him equally energetically as he and the Angels walked off the field after the top of the ninth. They booed again when Todd Frohwirth retired the Angels in order in the bottom of the inning for his first major league save, preserving the victory for Jeff Ballard (6-9).

“When you get two out and then you just don’t finish it off, there’s just no excuse,” Harvey (1-3) said after his third blown save in 26 opportunities. “You’ve got to buckle down and get that other out.”

Instead, he gave up a single to Milligan, who was replaced by pinch-runner Brady Anderson. After Anderson stole second, Harvey threw a ball to Martinez. Guessing that Harvey would throw a fastball, Martinez hoped merely to hit the ball hard enough to drive in Anderson with the tying run.

“The guy’s got an ERA around 1, so you know he doesn’t make many mistakes,” said Martinez, who was signed by Baltimore last November as a six-year minor league free agent and was recalled from triple-A Rochester on July 5. “The ball was right down the middle. I don’t know what he was trying to do.

“He made a mistake and I just happened to capitalize. It doesn’t happen often.”

Nor does it happen often that McCaskill pitches as well as he did Monday. He gave up three singles in eight innings, only the second time in 19 starts he had left a game with a shutout. The other time, May 25, he pitched seven shutout innings and Mark Eichhorn and Harvey finished a 5-0 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.

McCaskill retired 13 in a row Monday, from the fourth inning until Mike Devereaux drew a two-out walk in the eighth. He seemed sure to end his personal three-game losing streak once the Angels scored in the fifth on a bunt single by Luis Sojo, a groundout and a single by Dick Schofield.

“He pitched an outstanding game,” Tingley said of McCaskill. “He’d give up a hit and then we’d get a ground ball or he’d go right after somebody and get them. He did a good job. It’s just too bad we didn’t get a win for him.”

The Angels got 10 hits--all singles--against Ballard, but Baltimore’s defense snuffed the Angels’ threats. Devereaux threw Dave Winfield out at home as Winfield tried to tag on Dave Gallagher’s fly to shallow center, and the infield turned three double plays.

“Ten hits, jeez, we should have put some runs across,” Tingley said. “But every time we put a runner on, they’d get a ground ball or a double play. We had chances.”

Harvey has let other save chances slip away, such as the June 23 game at Detroit in which he was a strike away from a 2-1 victory when Mickey Tettleton homered. The Angels lost that one in extra innings. Harvey has been around long enough to know he will have to forget Monday’s loss, painful as it was.

“I feel like I did in Detroit,” he said. “When you get that close, you’ve got to put them away.”

Said Angel third baseman Gary Gaetti: “It always hurts when you lose with two out in the ninth. Those are the worst.”