Floundering Angels Seek New Direction : Baseball: Executives meet at Anaheim Stadium to discuss club’s assets and try to ‘figure out which way to turn.’

Dan O’Brien was only half joking when he described the scene at a meeting of Angel executives Monday at Anaheim Stadium.

“Right now, Richard Brown, Whitey Herzog, Buck Rodgers and I are sitting at a table, with garters on our sleeves and green (visors) on, pouring over a blueprint,” said O’Brien, the club’s senior vice president for baseball operations. “We’re trying to figure out which way to turn.”

Herzog, senior vice president for player personnel, arrived in California Monday to talk with O’Brien, Rodgers--the Angels’ manager--and Brown, the club’s president. They discussed the team’s major and minor league assets in conversations that O’Brien described as ongoing.

O’Brien said the Angels “are looking in a lot of directions” after Danny Tartabull’s decision to accept a five-year, $25.5-million offer from the New York Yankees before getting into serious negotiations with the Angels.

“There are other areas we can improve on, not just our offense,” O’Brien said. “You can’t limit yourself . . . You can’t be sure you’re going to get anybody, so you work through it and you work around it. You can’t let your situation hinge on one player. People change addresses for different reasons--sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s people.”

He also said he saw no common theme in the decisions of free agents Tartabull, Bobby Bonilla and Otis Nixon not to sign with the Angels, or the departures of free agents Kirk McCaskill and Wally Joyner.

“There’s a lot of people who want to come to Anaheim, but this doesn’t happen to be the year it can happen,” O’Brien said. “I have to believe Anaheim is still one of the more desirable places to play. I think a lot of people want to have Anaheim, California, as their address. I know that for a fact. It just hasn’t happened.”

Rodgers said he would have welcomed Tartabull’s bat in the lineup but understood the club’s decision not to commit to a five-year deal.

“You’ve got to use your common sense financially,” he said. “Danny Tartabull wasn’t as important to us as Bonilla was, and when it got to the point where it got crazy, it was no big thing,” Rodgers said. “I don’t want to say that lightly. We’ve got a lot of people--Hubie Brooks, Lee Stevens, Luis Polonia--who can DH and are in the adequate defensive situation category.

“Tartabull would have been a nice guy to have in the lineup, sure. We thought if we could get him on our terms, fine, and until the Yankees jumped in (last weekend), we were in the ballpark. It would have been a good fit, but fiscally, five years doesn’t make sense.

“There are too many attractive people coming out (eligible for free agency) next year.”

Rodgers said he and Herzog “went over a bunch of names and brought some new names onto the table.” Also included in their discussion was Bill Bavasi, the Angels’ director of minor league operations. Expanding the talent pool on the minor league level was a key topic, since it could help the Angels swing a trade. “This isn’t just building a starting lineup. This is building depth from triple-A up,” Rodgers said.

Despite an expected falloff in offensive production after the exits of Joyner and Dave Winfield--who combined for 49 home runs and 182 runs batted in in 1991--Rodgers predicted an increase in enthusiasm next season.

“We’re changing the chemistry of the club and I’m excited about it. I didn’t like it when I first took over, because guys were too laid back,” said Rodgers, who succeeded Doug Rader Aug. 26. “Most of our enthusiasm was in the pitching staff. Those are the take-charge guys.

“Now, we’ve got some everyday players who are take-charge guys, like Hubie Brooks and Von Hayes. They’re blue collar, down-in-the-dirt guys. They want to play.

“What we’re concentrating on is chemistry. But we’ve got some bats. And (Herzog) isn’t done yet.”

Jim Bronner, who represents free agent Mike Gallego, denied rumors that the Angels had offered the infielder a three-year contract. Gallego, who attended UCLA three years and lives in Yorba Linda, hit .247 for the Oakland Athletics last season with 12 home runs and 49 RBIs. He has rejected arbitration and has until midnight Wednesday to re-sign with the A’s or wait until May 1 to negotiate with them again.

An Oakland source said the Angels had proposed a three-year deal, but Bronner said “there’s nothing there . . . The Angels did not make an offer.”

Gallego is expected to make a decision about his future today.

O’Brien also said he is not talking about a trade with the Yankees, despite a revival of the rumors about a trade of Steve Sax for third baseman Gary Gaetti.