Quick Deficit Helps Beat Angels, 10-5 : Baseball: Palmeiro hits a three-run homer in the first inning to fuel the Orioles. Lorraine is ineffective.

The Angels say this is a crucial home stand, 13 games that could make or break what they believe are realistic chances of contending for the title in baseball’s sorriest division.

But the first of four teams to pass through Anaheim Stadium this month left Sunday with a bunch of fatter batting averages, inflated slugging statistics and a winning percentage closing in on .600. The Baltimore Orioles not only beat the Angels, 10-5, before 17,525, they left the home team searching for a way to win games in which it scores five runs.

After the first four games of the two-week stretch deemed so important, Angel starting pitchers are 0-3 with a 5.87 earned-run average. And Sunday’s starter, Russ Springer, again put the Angels in a hole early.

Before the first Angel stepped into the batter’s box, Baltimore led, 3-0, on a three-run homer by Rafael Palmeiro, who was nine for 15 with three homers and eight runs batted in during the series.

Springer has given up 23 runs in 24 1/3 innings over five starts this season and by the time he departed after three innings, the Orioles were ahead, 5-1.

Bouyed by Saturday night’s ninth-inning rally for a 4-3 victory, the Angels were quickly squashed by the Orioles’ power parade.

“It’s tough being down, 3-0, that fast, but that shouldn’t have taken all that much wind out of our sails,” Chili Davis said. “I’m not blaming the pitching, but it’s even tougher when you start to come back and then they keep putting you down again.”

The Angels scored in the second inning on Davis’ homer, his 100th as an Angel. But the Orioles countered with two runs on a home run by former Angel Dwight Smith in the third. Baltimore scored again in the fifth and sixth innings, negating the Angels’ two-run fifth. The Angels scored in the seventh and eighth, but only after the Orioles had scored three in the seventh.

“That was the most frustrating thing when I was (with the Angels),” Smith said. “We were scoring a lot of runs, but still not winning.”

Smith and his new teammates are 53-37 and chasing the Yankees in the AL East. The Angels are 39-54 and chasing windmills in the West.

“It’s frustrating, no question,” said right fielder Tim Salmon, who was removed in the seventh inning after his right hamstring was injured again. “Rafael and Dwight had us down early and then every time we scored, they came right back.”

The only redemption on this day might come from a solid major league debut by Andrew Lorraine, a 21-year-old rookie left-hander who was called up from the minors after Friday night’s game. But Lorraine, who is being groomed for the starting rotation, struggled.

He gave up nine hits and four earned runs in three innings, walking two without a strikeout and still he was praised by Lachemann, which might speak volumes on the state of the staff.

“I liked what I saw,” Lachemann said. “He pitched a lot better than his numbers indicated. He gave up nine hits, but there were a lot of squirrelly hits in there.

“(Brady) Anderson’s (double) was the only one I remember being hit hard. The rest were all pretty cheap really.”

The Angel offense produced nine hits and five runs, but Lachemann seemed more upset with his batters than his pitchers, which also speaks to the state of the staff.

“The way we played today was pretty disappointing,” he said. “We didn’t come out with a lot of fire and we gave away a number of at-bats late in the game. Three runs in the first inning on a Sunday afternoon in this park isn’t going to beat you.

“Sure, you would like to win when you score five runs, but the reality in this league is that five runs is just about good enough to break even.”

The Angels, of course, are a long way from breaking even and in reality teetering on the precipice of falling out of contention in the American League West, which could produce baseball’s first winner with a losing record.

“There’s no question the rest of this home stand is crucial,” Salmon said.

“We’ve got nine games left and we’ve got our work cut out for us. We’ve got Boston and then New York coming in, and those are teams that can bury you.”