Angels Lead by 8-3, Lose to Indians, 10-8 : Baseball: Cleveland scores seven runs in the seventh inning. Errors help deny Sanderson a victory again.

He left the game after six innings with that comfortable feeling, the one familiar to all who have finished a good day’s work.

Then, it took the Angel bullpen and defense a mere one inning to blow Scott Sanderson’s game, Manager Buck Rodgers’ patience, and the entire evening for the Angels.

They squandered a five-run lead as Cleveland won its seventh consecutive game, 10-8, before 26,011 at Anaheim Stadium.

No matter that J.T. Snow homered for the first time since May 17, a span of 110 at-bats. No matter that Tim Salmon added a three-run homer later and Greg Myers drove home two more runs with a pinch-hit single.

And no matter that the Angels drove Cleveland starter Tom Kramer to the showers after only three innings.

Sanderson, who had lost six consecutive decisions, punched out for the evening after the sixth, having given up three runs on eight hits, figuring he was in line for his first victory since May 27.

The Indians scored seven runs--three unearned--against three Angel relievers in the seventh, taking advantage of three Angel errors.

“That was a pathetic ballgame, utterly pathetic,” Rodgers said. “Everything I thought we had learned, we forgot tonight. We forgot what base to cover, when to cover it, when to throw the ball, where to throw it, who’s the cut-off man . . . everything we did tonight was lousy . . . lousy.”

It was one more loss in a troubling pattern for the Angels.

The Angels are 18-8 when Mark Langston and Chuck Finley last long enough to get a decision and 11-23 in games started by various fourth and fifth starters.

As the Angels scour their clubhouse and General Manager Whitey Herzog tours the minor league system in search of pitchers to fill the No. 4 and 5 slots, Sanderson, as the veteran and swing man on the staff, becomes more and more critical.

“The guy in the middle is the deciding factor,” Rodgers said. “But that could be with any club in baseball, too.”

The Indians overcame a 3-0 deficit with one swing of Wayne Kirby’s bat.

After third baseman Alvaro Espinoza and catcher Junior Ortiz singled, Kirby hit an 0-and-1 Sanderson pitch over the 370-foot sign in right. It was only the third home run this season for Kirby, a 29-year-old rookie who has provided speed in the No. 2 hole in the Indian lineup and has done a solid job defensively in right field after Mark Whiten was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals during spring training.

But after Carlos Baerga’s double and a walk to Albert Belle, Sanderson induced Paul Sorrento to pop up into foul territory down the third-base line and, after a 1-2-3 sixth, Sanderson called it an evening.

Little did he know what would come next.

Kirby doubled home a run against reliever Jerry Nielsen in the seventh to give him a fourth RBI, the best output of his 94-game career.

And, although the Angels had taken an 8-3 lead in the sixth on a broken-bat pinch-hit Myers single and a three-run Salmon home run, Nielsen matched Sanderson’s output of three runs given up in only 14 pitches in the seventh.

What was that Rodgers was saying about pitching? The five-run Angel lead lasted about 10 minutes.

After Kirby’s RBI double, Belle singled home a run, another scored on Sorrento’s sacrifice fly and then Reggie Jefferson was safe at first on a Gary DiSarcina error.

Espinoza lined a single to right, which Salmon kicked, picked up and then threw to third and. But third baseman Rene Gonzales was over toward the right side of the infield as the cut-off man, and, as for the rest of the Angels, they watched the ball bounce into the camera well.

Salmon was charged with two errors and, by time the inning was finished, the Indians had seven runs on five hits and were leading, 10-8. Three of the runs were unearned.