BASEBALL / DAILY REPORT : ANGELS : Cutting Losses, Gaining Problems

A report in USA Today saying Angel co-owner Jackie Autry had declared all team expenditures of $250 or more must receive her approval is “inane and demeaning to her,” club president Richard Brown said Friday.

Brown said he issued that memo in his effort to cut operating costs. The club’s losses are projected to be $5.5 million this season, despite income generated by entry fees from the two NL expansion teams.

“If somebody is going to make that purchase, I want to know about it. It doesn’t mean they can’t do it, just that I want to know about it,” Brown said. “I’d rather cut budgets before I cut people. Before I let anybody go I’d like to stop the bleeding this way.”

Brown also declined to comment on talks between the Blue Jays and Angels in which Toronto reportedly offered five players for left-hander Jim Abbott. “I never comment on rumors,” he said.

However, he, in essence, denied the rumor by reaffirming team executives’ resolve to keep the pitching staff intact. “What we’d really like to do is set the ship on a straight course and build from within and possibly add free agents,” Brown said. “We’re going to take our lumps, but we feel we’re going to build an outstanding organization.”

The investigator looking into the bus accident that left Angel Manager Buck Rodgers with multiple fractures and injured 12 other people is awaiting transcripts of the passengers’ accounts of the mishap and will incorporate those statements in his report to the National Transportation Safety Board, a board spokesman said.

The May 21 accident occurred when one of two buses carrying the Angels from New York to Baltimore drove off the New Jersey Turnpike and into a grove of trees in Deptford Township, N.J. Rodgers, who suffered a fractured left knee, broken right wrist, shattered right elbow and two cracked ribs, is still about a month away from returning.

Alan Pollock, spokeman for the NTSB, said he expects investigator Bill Walker to submit an analysis to the NTSB’s Washington office in July. The report will be grouped with other accidents and reviewed in August. “We’ll probably know who won the World Series before we know the cause of the accident,” Pollock said.

Von Hayes was available Thursday for the first time since spraining his left ankle Sunday. . . . Interim Manager John Wathan watched the Angels’ triple-A Edmonton team lose at Tacoma, 8-1, Wednesday. His hopes of seeing outfielder Tim Salmon, the Pacific Coast League’s leading hitter, were foiled because Salmon had a pulled groin muscle. “I told him, ‘I came to get you. I’ve got the rental car and everything and now you’re hurt,’ ” Wathan said. “I scared him until I told him I was only joking.”