Harvey Hurts, So Do Angels, 4-3

Ignoring the ache in his pitching elbow didn’t make it go away, so Bryan Harvey reluctantly took six days off and hoped rest would cure the ailment that had flattened his forkball and fattened his earned-run average.

Harvey made two painful discoveries Saturday: the ache hasn’t gone away and his forkball hasn’t come back. Harvey, the American League’s save leader last season, gave up the tying and winning runs in the eighth inning, blowing a game for Bert Blyleven and allowing the Brewers to rally for a 4-3 victory before 26,543 at County Stadium.

“I’ve got just one pitch, and I can’t get it up there and make it work,” said Harvey, whose wild pitch put pinch-runner Tim McIntosh in position to score the tying run on Kevin Seitzer’s sacrifice fly. Harvey’s next pitch was slammed into the right-field seats by Paul Molitor, Molitor’s seventh home run of the season and fifth hit in six at-bats against Harvey.

“I just can’t make it get out there and get down in the dirt,” Harvey (0-4) said of his forkball. “When I get a good one, it should go down pretty hard. I haven’t had a good one in a while. . . . You go through spells during the season where you have a couple of bad outings, but you always find it before too long. I can’t get it.”

He’s been pitching in discomfort for a while, although he didn’t seek treatment until May 26, according to head trainer Ned Bergert.

Harvey pitched twice after that before rest was prescribed.

In eight appearances since May 12, over 9 2/3 innings, Harvey has given up 13 hits and eight earned runs, walked five and struck out nine. His earned-run average in that span is 7.45; overall, it has ballooned from 0.55 to 3.12. He has three saves, three losses and two blown saves in those games. He has blown three saves in 16 opportunities this season.

“He’s been getting treatment for a while, and it’s not often Bryan Harvey goes in the training room,” said interim Manager John Wathan, who concealed Harvey’s problem because he didn’t want opponents to know Harvey was ailing or unavailable. “He’s thrown on the side, and he said he was fine. . . . We’ll have to re-evaluate and see if he’s still fine (today). That would obviously be a devastating blow if it continues to persist.”

Bergert said Harvey’s condition was called medial epicondylitis, soreness of a muscle on the inside of the elbow because of overuse. He said Harvey would be examined today, “and we’ll talk to everybody and decide the proper thing to do.”

Wathan summoned Harvey in the eighth inning to try to protect the 3-1 lead the Angels built on a two-run fifth inning and Hubie Brooks’ team-leading seventh homer in the sixth against Jaime Navarro (6-4).

Blyleven had allowed B.J. Surhoff’s homer--the 416th he has yielded--and he was touched for another run in the seventh as he began to tire. Robin Yount doubled--the 531st of his career, 16th on the all-time list--and scored on Darryl Hamilton’s single to right field, but Mark Eichhorn killed that rally by striking out Greg Vaughn and getting Dave Nilsson to line to first.

Wathan didn’t second-guess his decision to call on Harvey in the eighth inning.

“I wouldn’t have put him out there if I felt he wasn’t fit. It’s not worth risking the future of Bryan Harvey,” Wathan said. “I didn’t really consider (leaving Eichhorn in the game) because of the fact it had been six days and Harv said he was fine. I’ve got to go with what Bryan says and Lach (pitching coach Marcel Lachemann) says.”

But Harvey wasn’t fine. Jim Gantner led off with a broken-bat single to right off a fastball, and left for pinch-runner McIntosh. Pat Listach’s sacrifice moved Listach to second, and he took third on a 1-and-2 forkball that bounced wildly in the dirt and away from catcher Ron Tingley.

The next pitch, to Seitzer, scored McIntosh; the next pitch, to Molitor, produced the home run that vaulted the Brewers into third place in the AL East and dropped the Angels to their 10th loss in 12 games.

Said Wathan: “It’s like a bad dream that we’re trying to wake up from. We need somebody to pinch us and get us out of this thing.”