Tettleton’s Guess Is Right and Angels Lose

With submariner Mark Eichhorn in the game and the score tied, designated hitter Mickey Tettleton of the Detroit Tigers figured Manager Sparky Anderson would call him back to the bench and send up a pinch-hitter.

He was wrong.

After working the count to two and two, Tettleton figured Eichhorn would throw him a forkball.

Tettleton was right.

“He’s a pure guess hitter, and he guessed right,” Eichhorn said after Tettleton’s leadoff homer in the ninth inning gave Detroit a 2-1 victory and sent the Angels home with three defeats in the last four games of their trip.

“He pretty much just sat on it,” Eichhorn (0-2) said after the Angels were swept in the two-game series at Tiger Stadium. “He’s gotten me twice the last two years. He just went out and hooked it and got it.”

The Angels got a strong pitching performance from starter Joe Grahe, who gave up one run in seven innings. Tiger left-hander Scott Aldred held them to four singles in seven innings. Rookie reliever John Doherty earned his first major league victory with two perfect innings.

“We’re picking it up a little bit,” said Anderson, whose team has won 11 of 20 games since a 0-6 start. “Nobody picks us better than fifth, so if we finish fifth or better, I’m a genius.”

Anderson’s leaving Tettleton in the game looked brilliant. Although he hit four homers against the Angels last season, in his first three at-bats Tuesday Tettleton hit a liner to third base and struck out twice.

His home run, which struck the facing of the second deck, was his eighth of the season and increased the Tigers’ major league-leading total to 38.

“I met him in the hallway afterward and told him, ‘I never dreamed it would be you,’ ” Anderson said. “He said, ‘I thought you were going to pinch-hit for me.’ I told him, ‘I should have.’ ”

The Angels wish he had.

“It’s disappointing to come here and get beat twice like this,” Luis Polonia said after the Angels’ fourth defeat on the eight-game trip and eighth loss in 10 one-run decisions. “They don’t have a super team that’s going to sweep us every time. We didn’t score many runs.”

Their offensive struggles Monday against Bill Gullickson’s off-speed selections may be understandable, but their flailing swings against Aldred on Tuesday were less comprehensible. Aldred can throw 86-87 m.p.h. and has a good changeup, but that doesn’t explain the weak infield popups and harmless fly balls the Angels consistently hit.

“I don’t know whether it’s the first time we’ve played in cool weather, or that this stadium gets you trying to jack the ball into the seats, but we had more popups and fly balls in this stadium in two games than in all the other games on this trip,” Manager Buck Rodgers said. “ . . . Gullickson pitched a pretty good game, but this kid, well, we didn’t give ourselves much chance to jump on him. . . .

“I’ve seen it happen before as a player and manager, coming into this ballpark for 1,000 years. I’ve seen a ballclub go sour because they tried to jack the ball out of the park. You learn discipline as the home club, but as the visiting club coming in here, you can get caught in a trap and we got caught.”

The Tigers scored first, on a single by Chad Kreuter and a double by Mark Carreon in the second inning, but the Angels caught up in the sixth. Chad Curtis’ grounder to the right side was bobbled by first baseman Cecil Fielder, whose throw was too late to catch the fleet rookie. The play was called an error, but the scorer’s decision was changed to an infield hit after the game.

Curtis stole second and third, then scored on Hubie Brooks’ grounder to second.

Grahe, who muddled through five innings in his last start, righted himself after the second inning and worked into the seventh. He was buoyed by a good defensive play by Polonia, whose throw enabled shortstop Gary DiSarcina to throw out Rob Deer, trying to score from second on Carreon’s line drive off the left-field wall.

“The ball hit my glove and the wall at the same time,” Polonia said. “I thought it was going out, but it died a little bit.”

Grahe gave up five hits, walked three and struck out five.

The Angels were glad to be going home, even though they have won only three of their first nine at Anaheim Stadium.

“We’ve been on the road enough,” Rodgers said. “This has still been a good trip. We would have liked to go home with a win in Detroit, but just the fact that we had a .500 road trip, where we are right now is not the worst thing in the world.”