Finley Beats Royals, 4-3, With Little Assistance : Angels: His 18th victory is accomplished despite three errors by teammates. Harvey gets 44th save.

The Angels got standout pitching from Chuck Finley Saturday night but also committed three errors before beating the Kansas City Royals, 4-3.

Finley (18-9) struck out five and walked four through 7 1/3 innings, beating the Royals a third consecutive time and becoming the fourth American League pitcher with at least 18 victories.

Bryan Harvey pitched the ninth inning for his league-leading 44th save, allowing one unearned run. But despite having three pitchers among the league’s top eight winners and the league’s leader in saves, the Angels are last in the AL West.

“I’m frequently asked why,” Manager Buck Rodgers said. “I agree it seems odd. But we haven’t scored a lot of runs, for one thing. We haven’t always had good defense. And our fourth starter is 10-19, and our fifth position at one time was 1-16. That explains the why. When your fifth position is 1-16, that can wipe out a lot of good work by other people.”

An error by second baseman Kevin Flora let an unearned run home in the ninth inning and put the tying run on third base before Todd Benzinger flied out to end the game.

“I thought we were going to pull it out,” Manager Hal McRae said. “After all that, I thought we were going to get it done.”

Luis Aquino (8-4), who had been 5-1 in his last decisions, failed to get out of the third inning, giving up eight hits and four runs.

Max Venable’s double scored Junior Felix with a run in the first inning. In the third, the Angels loaded the bases after Venable’s RBI single and made it 4-0 when Gary DiSarcina grounded a two-run single.

Brian McRae singled in the fourth inning and eventually scored on Kurt Stillwell’s single.

McRae doubled in the eighth and scored when Venable misplayed the hit into a two-base error.