Unlucky Abbott Gets Little Help in Another Loss : Baseball: The Angels give up two unearned runs with two errors in the first, paving way for 4-3 victory by the White Sox.

Without prompting, Buck Rodgers launched into a defense of his team’s defense.

“Mark my words: We’re going to be a hell of a defensive club before it’s over,” the Angel manager said.

“You may sit there and call me a liar, but we’re going to be one of the best clubs in the league before the year is over.”

After six errors and two defeats in two games, it seems Rodgers’ defense is better than his team’s.

Two errors in the first inning Wednesday night, one by first baseman Lee Stevens on the first grounder hit to him and another by right fielder Von Hayes on a rolling single by White Sox third baseman Robin Ventura, set up two unearned runs and undermined a laudable effort by Angel starter Jim Abbott.

Although the Angels caught up once, their offense was exhausted by the eighth inning, when Ventura singled up the middle to drive in the decisive run in a 4-3 victory before 21,622 at Anaheim Stadium.

“There’s going to be times when the defense picks you up and times you have to pick the defense up. Those things even out through the course of the year,” said Abbott, who gave up nine hits, struck out five and didn’t walk a batter in 7 1/3 innings. “I just try to pitch consistently and as well as I can through the course of the year and hope it all evens out.”

With Steve Sax on first after Stevens allowed a grounder to roll between his legs in the first, Ventura singled softly to right. Although Hayes said he was concentrating on the ball and not on the runner, the ball hopped past him, enabling Sax to score and Ventura to take third. Ventura scored on George Bell’s single to left.

“This type of grass is a lot different than the AstroTurf I’m used to,” said Hayes, who played on the artificial surface in Philadelphia before being traded to the Angels last December. “I thought the ball would be in my glove, and I could come up throwing. The ball zigzags on this turf.

“You have to stay aggressive. You don’t want to get into a passive mode. But it’s awful when that happens. . . . I don’t care about the error--I do care Jim Abbott did a hell of a job and deserved to win. I felt bad about that play costing him, and I’m going to do everything I can to make it up.”

The Angels made up that deficit against Greg Hibbard with a run in the bottom of the first and two in the third. Rookie Chad Curtis played a major role on both occasions, recording his first major league hit--a single--on the first pitch he saw in the first inning, and recording his first RBI in the second, on a sacrifice fly.

“It was nice to get that first hit,” he said, “but it would have been a lot nicer if it had come in a victory.”

It didn’t, because Hibbard allowed only four hits over his last 4 1/3 innings and Bobby Thigpen pitched a perfect ninth to record his first save. The Angels are 0-2 for only the fourth time in 32 seasons, as they were in 1975, ’79 and ’85.

The hitter who sealed the Angels’ fate was Ventura, Abbott’s teammate on the 1988 U.S. Olympic baseball team. Tim Raines had led off the eighth with a single, the eighth hit off Abbott, and moved to second on Sax’s sacrifice. Ventura was one for seven in his previous at-bats against Abbott. “I never feel comfortable against that guy,” Ventura said. “The only thing you can try to do is hit it hard and hope that it gets out there. He left a fastball out over the plate, and he doesn’t usually do that.”

With so fragile a balance between pitching, offense and defense, the Angels can afford few such errors. But Abbott hasn’t lost his faith in his teammates.

“It’ll happen,” he said of the team’s eventual meshing. “We’ve got a bunch of new guys and it’ll take time. You’ll be surprised. I bet we come together pretty well as a team before it’s all said and done.”