Finley Can’t Find Stuff, Loses : Angels: Without his fastball and forkball, he is pounded by Twins in 11-0 setback.

Without the blistering fastball that overwhelmed hitters and the biting forkball that turned them around as they chased pitches in the dirt, Chuck Finley is nearly empty-handed.

The Angels’ left-hander hasn’t lost the tenacity that twice made him an 18-game winner, but he has been unable to regain his signature pitches. Rocked again Wednesday, this time for 10 hits and four runs in the Minnesota Twins’ 11-0 victory over the Angels at the Metrodome, Finley (2-7) acknowledged he’s at a loss to explain where his forkball and fastball have gone.

“I really don’t have a consistent out pitch right now and that’s a big part of the problem,” said Finley, who threw 100 pitches as he labored through 5 2/3 innings and failed to win for the 10th time in his last 11 starts.

His forkball, he said, “comes and goes. I’ll throw a couple of good ones and I’ll throw one bad one and they hit it. I throw a halfway decent one and they foul it off. Over a period of time, that’s where you get all your pitches--foul tip, foul tip, strike, foul tip, ball. You can’t keep giving hitters five or six pitches in an at-bat.”

Finley’s failure was in stark contrast to Kevin Tapani’s two-hit pitching for the Twins. Opponents had been hitting Tapani at a .310 clip, but he retired 18 consecutive hitters between Rene Gonzales’ first-inning single and Junior Felix’s seventh-inning double.

Tapani (7-5) struck out a career-high 10 and walked none in recording the third shutout of his career, the second against the Angels.

“We’ve started putting things together,” Tapani said after the Twins’ fifth consecutive victory and seventh in eight games. “I’ve had good games back-to-back (losing a 1-0 decision to the Seattle Mariners last Friday), and I’ve been doing a better job of giving us a chance to win.”

Former Angel Chili Davis tagged Finley for a two-run home run in the first inning before the Metrodome crowd of 30,933 was settled in.

Kirby Puckett’s run-scoring single in the fifth and a run-scoring single by Brian Harper in the seventh--the first of Harper’s four RBIs--contributed to the 17-hit barrage against the Angels, who in the last three games were outscored, 18-3, while losing to John Smiley, Scott Erickson and Tapani.

“It’s hard to tell some days whether it’s us or them,” Angel interim Manager John Wathan said. “Sometimes it’s both, but I thought today Tapani was that good. He was in the strike zone, and Erickson wasn’t even in the strike zone (Tuesday). Tapani had a good changeup and good slider and some pop on his fastball.”

Finley had a good fastball only occasionally and his top forkball almost never. Although he steadied after giving up five hits in the first inning, he struck out only two and walked three. With his toe injury supposedly no longer a factor and enough innings behind him to compensate for his curtailed spring training, the Angels have run out of explanations for Finley’s problems.

“It’s come to a point where you have to wonder,” Wathan said. “He’s certainly had a number of starts now where he should have caught up to everybody. If he hasn’t, he should quickly. Now it’s probably as much a mental thing for Chuck as any physical problem he had. . . .

“You keep hoping each team, this time is going to be the time he turns it around. And he’s had success against this club in the past (9-3 before Wednesday). That was my hope, that this would be the club where he could turn it around.”

Wednesday wasn’t the day. “He was getting behind a lot more today than he usually does,” said Harper, whose four RBIs matched his career best. “It’s much easier as a hitter to hit when it’s 2-and-0 instead of 0-and-2. But that’s something that can be corrected in one game, I think.”

Puckett, two for 17 after an impressive streak that raised his average to a league-leading .353, said Finley looked the same to him as in previous years. “He pitched me tough,” said Puckett, whose every move was wildly applauded by Twin fans in their campaign to get team owner Carl Pohlad to reverse his decision against giving Puckett a five-year contract.

“Fin is still Fin to me,” Puckett added. “He looked the same, except we hit the ball.”