Orioles’ Fernandez Refuses to Become a Statistic : Baseball: With double-digit scores all around him, left-hander subdues Angels, 4-2.

Every time you turn on the evening news or browse through the box scores these days, there’s another football score in a baseball game. Double- digit run totals are definitely in vogue.

Juiced-up baseballs? Extra hard lacquer on the bats? Theories abound, but Angel Manager Buck Rodgers says another factor is becoming increasingly evident.

“Pitching is scarce,” he said. “It’s a depressed market and it’s obvious everywhere you go. We’re all in the same boat.”

The Baltimore Orioles are doing their best to abandon that ship, however, and for the second night in a row, they threw an apparently live arm up against the Angels. Nobody’s writing rave reviews about the Orioles’ middle relievers, but who needs middle men when your starters are also finishers?

Wednesday night, Ben McDonald’s complete game made him the American League’s first five-game winner as Baltimore walloped the Angels, 13-1. Thursday night, left-hander Sid Fernandez punched another hole in Rodgers’ theory and punched out the Angels with a sparkling display of efficient pitching for 8 1/3 innings.

Fernandez gave up a line-drive homer to center by Chili Davis leading off the second inning and a bunt single by Chad Curtis leading off the fourth, then retired 16 of the next 17 Angels he faced. With one out in the ninth, Curtis hit an opposite-field homer and Oriole Manager Johnny Oates called on Lee Smith to get the last two outs and seal a 4-2 victory. It was Smith’s 11th save.

“I was determined not to fall behind and put (Curtis) on base, so I threw nothing but fastballs,” said Fernandez, who came off the disabled list April 17 after suffering from tendinitis in his left biceps. “I don’t consider one-run homers to be mistakes.”

Clearly, Fernandez’s miscues were few and far between on this evening.

“That’s as good a game as has been pitched against us all season,” Rodgers said. “El Sid had good stuff tonight. We kept popping up and flying out. He had a good live fastball and was mixing in that slop curveball. He keeps you guessing.”

Fernandez needed only 99 pitches to subdue the Angels. It was, Oates pointed out, a classic example of a pitcher going to the mound with a game plan and then “doing exactly what he wanted to do.”

“I didn’t consider it easy,” Fernandez protested. “A shutout, maybe, is easy. But I learned early in my career not to waste pitches. Guys talk about how you have to waste pitches, but I just go after them. As far as I’m concerned, pitches are too valuable to waste.”

It’s hard to knock Fernandez’s go-get-’em style. He has allowed 6.63 hits per nine innings during his career, second best in major league history among pitchers with 1,500 or more innings. Nolan Ryan (6.55) is the all-time leader.

After 10 seasons with the Mets, his escape from New York has landed him with a bona fide contender in Baltimore. Fernandez signed with the Orioles as a free agent last November.

“I departed on good terms with the Mets,” he said. “It wasn’t a hostile thing at all. We had some good times, a world championship, but it was time to move on.”

Does he think the change of scenery will rejuvenate his career?

“Ask me in September. Better yet, ask me in October,” he said, smiling.