Nixon Remains With the Braves : Baseball: After the Angels refuse to give him a guaranteed three-year contract, the outfielder decides to re-sign with Atlanta. Buechele stays with Pirates.

Otis Nixon, unable to get a fully guaranteed three-year deal from the Angels, re-signed Thursday with the Atlanta Braves, agreeing to a $5.6-million, two-year contract with a player option for a third season that could make the package worth $8.1 million.

Although the Angels had openly declared their interest in the speedy outfielder and had projected him as their center fielder and leadoff hitter, Dan O’Brien, Angel senior vice president, said that Nixon’s price was too steep.

He said he tried to modify Nixon’s demands in a conversation Thursday morning with Nixon’s agent, Joe Sroba, but Sroba called the Braves and worked out a deal after hearing the Angels’ rejection.

“I could not recommend to anybody that we sign him for that money,” O’Brien said from his Anaheim Stadium office. “I told his representative, ‘We’ll talk,’ and the next time I spoke to him, he told me, ‘I hate to tell you this, but we just signed with the Braves.’ ”

Declining to guarantee the entire contract, O’Brien said, “was one of a number of elements we were going to work on.”

Already thwarted in their attempts to sign free agent Bobby Bonilla and re-sign Wally Joyner, the Angels will try elsewhere to find help for a lineup that was offensively stale and slow-footed last season.

“Otis Nixon would certainly have helped our team,” Angel President Richard Brown said. “We want to get the speed he represents, but we didn’t put that kind of (financial) value on him. We’ll have to look for that speed elsewhere. Junior Felix is our center fielder until proven otherwise. . . .

“If the book were written on the 1992 season right now, I wouldn’t enjoy reading it. But the book has not been written.”

Brown also said the Angels are interested in free-agent outfielder Danny Tartabull, but that they have some reservations.

“He does a lot of things that would be beneficial to our ballclub, but we’re not inclined to go to five years at this point in time,” Brown said. “To my understanding, we have not talked to his agent (Dennis Gilbert) because we’ve had other things on the burner.”

The Pittsburgh Pirates, who lost Bonilla and are trying to trade Barry Bonds before they lose him to free agency, re-signed third baseman Steve Buechele for $11 million over four years.

Buechele had few options after confusion in the New York Yankees’ front office led them to end their pursuit before it became serious. Buechele, from Fullerton, will receive a $1-million signing bonus, $2.35 million in 1992, $2.65 in 1993, $2.3 million in 1994 and $2.7 million in 1995. He was traded from Texas to Pittsburgh late last season.

His agent, Alan Meersand, said the lack of interest in Buechele “had shades of collusion in it.

“Here are seven or eight clubs needing third basemen and professing to it, and nobody’s making any bids except the Pirates,” Meersand said.

Baseball Notes

The winter meetings set a record with 51 players being involved in trades or free-agent signings. The previous high of 45 was set in 1988 and equaled last year. . . . The eight free-agent signings are the fewest since eight signed during the 1986 meetings in Hollywood, Fla., and the 14 trades were the most since 1983.

The Dodgers named Ralph Avila a vice president Thursday. Avila had been their regional coordinator and director of Campo Las Palmas, home of the Dodger baseball academy and a training center for Latin American players. Avila will remain based in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

* KEN KELTNER DIES: The third baseman who gained fame for helping stop Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak is dead at age 75. C12