Angels Win Fifth in a Row : Baseball: DiSarcina’s personal-best three runs batted in fuel a 12-4 victory over the Yankees.

The Angels had climbed out of last place in the American League West the night before. And with a 12-4 victory over the Yankees on Friday night at Anaheim Stadium, they made sure they stayed out.

It wasn’t a pretty game, but the Angels put a stamp on it with a six-run eighth inning in front of 31,410 at Anaheim Stadium.

It was the Angels’ first six-run inning since April 26. The victory was their fifth in a row, their longest streak of the season.

It was a victory sparked by Gary DiSarcina’s three runs batted in, tying a personal best, and also by Yankee ineptitude.

The Angels and the Yankees get most of their publicity for being poor offensive teams. The Angels were hitting .241, last in the American League, before Friday’s game. The Yankees weren’t doing much better, at .247.

But the two teams were wearing out the basepaths Friday as they showed another reason both have struggled: Their pitching isn’t very good, either.

Those were two veteran starters taking the mound--Chuck Finley and Scott Sanderson--but both had sky-high earned-run averages.

Neither made it out of the fifth inning.

Finley went 4 2/3 innings, with little trouble before a disastrous fifth. Sanderson went 4 1/3, giving up 10 hits and six runs.

Neither is exactly an isolated case on his team. Despite the Angels’ vaunted pitching staff, the team ERA is 3.99; New York’s is 4.15.

The Angels gave Finley a 5-0 lead after two innings, scoring a run against Sanderson during the first and victimizing him for four more in the second.

It was a rare outburst by the Angels. Sanderson gave up five hits in the second, including Luis Polonia’s two-run double, which was immediately followed by Luis Sojo’s run-scoring double. Sanderson’s next act was to plunk Junior Felix with his first pitch, but Felix seemed to take it in stride.

The Angels say that Finley, who entered the game with a 2-9 record and a 5.44 ERA, is troubled neither by his left toe, surgically repaired last winter, nor by any decline in velocity.

Interim manager John Wathan says the problem is location, and a forkball that doesn’t dive sharply, and ends up looking like “an 82 mile-an-hour fastball” that too often has resulted in Finley giving up home runs.

Finley wasn’t victimized by the homer this time. He didn’t give up a hit until Roberto Kelly’s one-out single up the middle in the fourth inning.

But during the fifth, Finley fell apart, facing nine and giving up four runs on six hits and two walks before he was replaced. Chuck Crim came on and retired Jim Leyritz, the batter who had started the inning, to finally end it.

Finley had given up a single to Leyritz, who scored as left fielder Chad Curtis as he had trouble corralling Mike Stanley’s one-out double to the left- field corner. Curtis was charged with an error. Pat Kelly followed with a single, Stanley reaching third. Then, in a stroke of bad luck for Finley, Andy Stankiewicz hit a shot up the middle that caromed off Finley’s body and into foul territory near the Yankee dugout, with Stanley scoring on the play.

Finley got the second out when Mel Hall grounded to first, but then walked Roberto Kelly to load the bases. Another run would score when Mattingly reached on a high-chopper to second base.

Sojo waited and waited for it to come down, then fired to first, too late. Still another run scored when Finley walked Danny Tartabull with the bases full. It proved his last act of the evening. Crim came on to retire Leyritz on a foul pop, leaving the bases loaded.

The Angels, after giving away four runs of their five-run lead during the top of the fifth inning, extended their lead to 6-4 in the bottom of it. Polonia led off with a double and took third on a groundout before Von Hayes drove him in with a double.