Abbott’s Efforts Wasted : Angels: Things are so bad, even Harvey can’t save victory for him. Yankees tie it in ninth and win it in 12th, 3-2, to sweep the series.

It has become a familiar refrain: Jim Abbott pitches well--very well--but his effort goes unrewarded.

It’s as familiar as the sight of the Angels losing, which they did Wednesday for the fifth time in six games on this trip and seventh in nine games overall.

Abbott held the Yankees hitless for 5 2/3 innings Wednesday and to three hits for 7 1/3, but he had nothing to show for it after the Angels’ 3-2 loss at Yankee Stadium. He held the Yankees to one run, on a double by Don Mattingly and a single by Jim Leyritz in the seventh, but Bryan Harvey gave up a run in the ninth and Chuck Crim (1-2) yielded a single to Jesse Barfield and a double to Charlie Hayes in the 12th. That enabled the Yankees to overtake the Angels for their seventh victory in eight games and a sweep of the three-game series.

“I’m happy with the way I’ve thrown. I’ve thrown the ball pretty well, to be honest,” said Abbott, who has given up only 17 hits in his last 28 1/3 innings and has reduced his earned-run average to 2.42--even though his record stayed at 2-5.

“Whenever you lose games by a little bit, you always want a pitch or two back,” he added. “It’s the little things here or there that have caused decisions to go the other way.”

The Angels, who have scored a mere six runs for Abbott in his last 43 innings, scored two in the eighth against Scott Kamieniecki on a single by Gary Gaetti, a double by pinch-hitter Alvin Davis and a single by Luis Polonia.

Manager Buck Rodgers pulled Abbott after he walked Hayes to open the eighth, and Randy Velarde sacrificed Hayes to second. Harvey escalated that threat with a wild pitch on Don Mattingly’s strikeout but defused it by striking out Roberto Kelly with runners on first and third.

But Harvey, whose only previous blown save this season was also in a game Abbott stood to win--April 18 at Kansas City--couldn’t hold off the Yankees in the ninth. Danny Tartabull singled to left and was forced at second by Mel Hall. Pinch-hitter Kevin Maas lined a forkball into the right-field corner to move Hall to third. He scored on Barfield’s sacrifice fly.

“They went down and got ‘em,” Harvey said of the pitches to Maas and Barfield. “Maas just pulled it back. Some nights, he’s going to make an out on it. Some nights, he ain’t. It’s what you’ve got to live with.”

Nonetheless, he finds it hard to live with blowing saves for Abbott. Harvey led the American League last season with 46 saves and blew only six opportunities--but four of them were in potential Abbott victories.

“We don’t seem to do a whole lot right when he pitches,” Harvey said.

Not that the Angels, who fell below .500 for the first time since April 25, are doing things right behind any of their pitchers. They have scored only 11 runs in their last six games, and they left two runners on in the eighth, one in the 10th, two in the 11th and one in the 12th against John Habyan (2-1).

Their second successive extra-inning loss to the Yankees left them 1-3 in extra-inning games and 4-10 in one-run contests.

“It’s not good. We’ve got to win those close games, especially when we’ve got chances to win,” Rodgers said. “Harv doesn’t blow too many, but right now, we’re just not scoring runs and we’ve got to do everything right.”

Crim didn’t consider it a mistake to throw Hayes a fastball on a 2-and-0 count after starting him off with breaking balls.

“I didn’t want to walk anybody. Sometimes you have to throw a strike and hope he pops it up,” Crim said. “You can’t give the hitters so much credit (and pitch around them). I made a pretty decent pitch to Barfield and he hit a ground ball through the infield. Sometimes, that’s going to be hit to the shortstop and be an out.”

It wasn’t an out Wednesday.

“I was looking to my strength, a fastball inside,” said Hayes, who had only three hits in his previous 32 at-bats. “I just wanted to get a good swing on it. The first pitch was a breaking ball that almost hit me and the second was a breaking ball away. If the guy had been on second or third I think he would have thrown me another curveball. I was just looking in. It didn’t matter what pitch it was.”

It was the final pitch, because Hayes lined it into the alley in left-center and Barfield galloped home. “Getting Danny (Tartabull, who had been injured) back in the lineup makes everything different for us,” Hayes said. “It makes our lineup a lot more presentable.”

The Angels’ lineup is simply unproductive, and Rodgers acknowledged he has few options for shaking things up.

“We’re going to keep doing things we did. We’ve got to keep battling our way through it,” Rodgers said after his team dropped 4 1/2 games out of first in the AL West, its biggest deficit of the season. “We’re not going to stop playing our game.”

Said Abbott: “We have to not let this seem like more than it is. We have to move on and try to win in Baltimore. The day off (today) will help. We can get away from baseball but be together a little bit.”