By His Standard, There’s a Problem : Angels: Finley loses to Baltimore, 5-2, in his second attempt to win his 14th game.

Angel Manager Doug Rader complimented left-hander Chuck Finley, saying he did as good a job as Baltimore starter Bob Milacki.

But Finley’s standard of comparison is his performance a year ago, and, by that measure, he found himself wanting.

Finley’s second attempt to become the American League’s first 14-game winner failed Wednesday when he gave up a home run to Chito Martinez in the seventh inning and a two-run homer to Leo Gomez in the eighth that clinched Baltimore’s 5-2 victory at Memorial Stadium.

Finley got little support as the Angels had five hits against Milacki (6-4) in 7 1/3 innings. But Finley said he didn’t perform as well or as convincingly as he wanted.

His record fell to 13-5 in 21 starts, and his earned-run average rose to 3.98, considerably higher than the 2.29 he compiled through as many starts last season and his final figure of 2.40.

“My job is to keep the game close, and I did that until the eighth inning,” said Finley, who rarely has shown the dominance he displayed routinely last season. “I’m not pitching the same as I was last year, but last year was a very tough year for anybody to duplicate. I came into this year not thinking about stats, but just to do as well as I can.

“I’m not throwing the ball really that well. I’ve had about 40 runs scored against me with two out. But as long as I’m healthy, I want to keep going out there as long as they keep putting me out there. . . . You always strive for excellence, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you’re good, sometimes you’re mediocre and sometimes you’re just bad.”

There’s little doubt that “bad” is the description that fits the Angels’ offense.

“The last thing you want to do when the team is having trouble scoring runs is put the team in a hole, because that means extra grinding to get out of that hole,” Finley said. “But one or two runs is not that much for this team (to overcome).”

It was a big deficit against Milacki.

The Orioles scored a run against Finley in the first inning on a double by Martinez and a single by Cal Ripken, and they added another in the fourth on a walk, a single and two fly balls.

The Angels pulled even by scoring once in the fifth inning on a double by Gary Gaetti and a single by former Oriole Dave Gallagher, and again in the seventh, on Dave Parker’s homer to right-center field.

But they had little left when Martinez’s homer gave Baltimore a 3-2 lead with one out in the seventh inning.

Singles by Luis Polonia and Dave Winfield put runners on first and third with two out in the eighth, but Mike Flanagan ended that threat by getting Parker to ground out to the right side.

After a single by Dwight Evans and Gomez’s homer on a 3-and-0 pitch gave the Orioles a 5-2 lead, the Angels went down meekly in the ninth to give Gregg Olson his 21st save.

“The ball that Gomez hit out, that really hurt,” Rader said after the Angels’ third loss in four games left them six games behind Minnesota.

The deeper wound may have been inflicted by Martinez’s homer, the rookie’s second crucial homer against the Angels in 10 days. Martinez’s two-out, two-run homer July 15 against reliever Bryan Harvey turned a potential 1-0 Angel victory into a 2-1 defeat, and his homer Wednesday had the same deflating effect.

“We tie the game and they get a home run that puts them back ahead. That’s what I call answering immediately,” Parker said.

Polonia was frustrated that the Angels wasted a chance to gain on Minnesota.

“Every time we get a win, we hope to turn things around. But the next day, it turns out to be the same thing,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. One win, one loss--where are we going to go? . . .

“These (AL East) teams are the ones for us to beat. But if we can’t beat them, what’s going to happen if we can’t beat Minnesota, Texas, Chicago and Oakland? It’s going to take a miracle.”