BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : AL West Mediocrity Already a Sore Point

It has been 48 hours or so since the Angels returned to Anaheim under the cover of darkness. They returned in first place in the American League West, but their current 9-14 record isn’t going to prompt any parades.

As General Manager Bill Bavasi said, “It’s ridiculous to be in first place with that kind of record, and I’m sure some people will use it to indict the new format, but I think it’s too early. I think the Angels and the rest of the division will play better as the year goes on.

“I think you have to wait to see what it looks like at the All-Star break. Right now, I have a tough time getting excited about being in first place and a tough time getting depressed over our record.”

It’s definitely early in this year of realignment, but the American League West threatens to become baseball’s worst nightmare, ammunition for those who insisted that the new format would cheapen the division races.

“I think it would be very unfortunate if one of the division winners finished below .500,” said Toronto Blue Jay General Manager Pat Gillick, a critic of the concept. “I don’t know about an embarrassment, but it certainly wouldn’t be a good advertisement for baseball.”

At 9-14, the Angels would be 4 1/2 games behind the Chicago White Sox in the West Division of 1993. Their pace projects to 66 victories, which would be the fewest for a division or league champion. The 1918 Boston Red Sox hold that record with 75 victories in a 126-game season. The Red Sox beat the Chicago Cubs that year in a six-game World Series.

“As bad as this is right now, if the season were to shut down today, we’d be going to the playoffs,” Bavasi said.

“I’m not happy with our record, but the goal is to win the division (title) and go from there. I mean, despite the record, we’d have accomplished the goal.”

In the meantime, matched against the deepest and most competitive of baseball’s six divisions through the first month, the four AL West teams are 18-35 against the East.

The four Western teams have a cumulative record of 33-52, with the Oakland Athletics having lost 10 in a row and the Angels six of their last seven. They held the division lead until losing Thursday night.

Said the A’s general manager, Sandy Alderson: “I don’t care about the division becoming baseball’s worst nightmare. We’re going through our worst right now.”

Alderson cited a flameout of the pitching staff, the loss of injured second baseman Brent Gates for six weeks and a recurrence of the heel injury that sidelined Mark McGwire for most of the 1993 season, now restricting the first baseman to designated hitter.

“I thought we were capable of winning the division and still do,” Alderson said. “We won it when it was one of the strongest in baseball, and I’d be satisfied to win it again no matter how many wins are involved.

“I think it’s very possible that a team will win a division at some point with a sub-.500 record, but I don’t think that has as much to do with realignment as with the disparities in revenue. The first three weeks are Exhibit A for revenue sharing. I mean, if this is baseball’s worst nightmare, there’s a fundamental explanation.”

Alderson cited the big-market revenues--and payrolls--of Toronto, Baltimore, Boston and New York in the East, and said, “The Central is more of a mixed bag, while the teams in the West have a lot less spending capability. The won-lost records are reflective of that.”

Gillick, with his nightly sellouts in SkyDome and $40-million-plus payroll, said he couldn’t dispute Alderson on that.

“I’ve seen studies that indicate the odds of winning in today’s market are a hell of a lot better with a $40-million payroll,” Gillick said. “I mean, the chances of a club winning with a $20-million payroll are almost nil. The Blue Jays didn’t create the system, but until it changes we’ll use our resources to the best of our advantage.”

While the Blue Jays pursue a fourth consecutive division title, baseball owners will cite the revenue and competitive disparities during their collective bargaining bid for a salary cap.

They recently presented the players’ union with financial figures and will soon begin the long-delayed talks. In the meantime, acting Commissioner Bud Selig said of the seemingly woeful West:

“These things run in cycles. If there’s a weakness in one division but the others are competitive, that doesn’t obviate the need to do what we did, to realign geographically and involve more teams in the race.

“If there’s a trend in the West, we hope it doesn’t continue, but there’s not a lot of concern yet. It’s early. I think most people recognized that it would be tough to compete with the top four clubs in the East, and when you’re playing a balanced schedule (with as many games out of the division as in), that could present trouble for another division or another group of teams.”

It definitely has, but it should come as no surprise. Only one Western team has emerged with a winning record in 15 of the 25 years of division play. In that time, Western teams have finished with a better-than-.500 record 34 times, and below .500 55 times.

It’s certainly no surprise to Bavasi, who predicted as much on the eve of the season when he said the Angels might have trouble competing in any of the other divisions but could definitely compete in the West.

He now looks at the Seattle Mariners’ suspect bullpen, the Texas Rangers’ shattered rotation and the A’s myriad problems and knows it to be true.

He knows that if the Angels can catch and throw consistently, if Mark Langston and Joe Magrane can return to augment Chuck Finley and Brian Anderson in the rotation, if Joe Grahe can save enough games, and reliever Troy Percival and starter Andrew Lorraine continue their triple-A progress with the possibility of a second-half recall . . . well, what he knows--or at least believes--is that in time the Angels will not have to slip their record home under the cover of darkness.

AL Worst?

Of the four teams in the new American League West Division, only Oakland has a record of better than .500 over the last 10 years. A breakdown:

SEATTLE MARINERS

Last 10 years: 740-879 (.457) Average: 74-88 (.457) 1994: 9-12 (.429)

TEXAS RANGERS

Last 10 years: 785-832 (.485) Average: 79-83 (.488) 1994: 8-11 (.421)

ANGELS

Last 10 years: 808-812 (.499) Average: 81-81 (.500) 1994: 9-14 (.391)

OAKLAND ATHLETICS

Last 10 years: 865-755 (.534) Average: 87-75 (.537) 1994: 7-15 (.318)