Consistent Finley Reaches His Goals

It was too late by the All-Star break for Chuck Finley to salvage his season, but he never considered it too late to salvage his pride.

After winning 18 games each of the last two seasons, the Angel left-hander was 2-9 in July and miserable every time he took the mound.

“The quality of my pitches was not good enough for me to go out there for seven, eight innings and keep the team in the game,” said Finley, who had nearly recovered from off-season surgery on his left big toe when he re-injured it while running out a bunt in the Angels’ final exhibition game. “Everything was up. It wasn’t what I was used to seeing coming from myself.”

Setting modest goals helped him finish in respectable fashion. Finley extended his winning streak to a season-best three and improved his earned-run average to 3.96 by pitching seven strong innings Thursday in a 5-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals, before a crowd of 16,867, the smallest at Anaheim Stadium since 14,811 showed up Sept. 29, 1978.

“I knew there wasn’t much I could do about my won-lost record, but my ERA was about 5 1/2 around the break and I wanted to get it under four. To do that, I had to pitch pretty consistently, and I think I did,” Finley said after striking out four, giving up eight hits and improving his record to 7-12. “I tried to get my hits and innings equaled up and things like that. They were a couple of little small things, but by thinking about them, it made me pitch a little better.”

Finley still gave up more than a hit an inning for the first time since 1987--he pitched 204 1/3 innings and yielded 212 hits--but his second-half ERA of 2.74 and his late winning streak will console him this winter.

Junior Felix and Luis Sojo each drove in two runs and John Orton executed a perfect suicide squeeze in the second inning against Bill Sampen (0-2) to provide the Angels’ runs. Scott Lewis pitched 1 1/3 relief innings and Steve Frey got his fourth save when he retired Wally Joyner on a flyball to short center and got Gregg Jefferies to ground into a force play with the bases loaded and one out in the ninth.

“I don’t think Chuck Finley ever quit,” Manager Buck Rodgers said. “The thing that makes him to valuable is that along with that tremendous left arm, he has the spirit to compete, and that’s what we really like about him.”