Now Even Finley Has Angels Scratching Their Heads

The Angels’ decision-makers have wrestled with their starting rotation, flipping it, flopping it, turning it over in their minds and in that space under the standings that lists probable pitchers.

“If we’re going to get it done,” Manager Marcel Lachemann said the other day, “we’re going to have to pitch consistently well and not just when Mark and Chuck are out there.”

These days, however, even those pillars of the rotation--Mark Langston and Chuck Finley--are liable to get rocked. When it comes to the Angel staff, you can’t count on anything anymore.

Thursday night at Anaheim Stadium was yet another long--3 hours 42 minutes long--case in point. The Angels pushed across a run in the second inning, another in the third and one more in the fourth. They ended up scoring four runs against New York’s Jimmy Key, baseball’s winningest pitcher, and seven in the game.

There was a time, Finley would take three or four runs and turn them into a runaway victory. But not in this season of the juiced ball, the corked bat and screwed-up pitching.

So Finley labored with his lead. He gave up a home run to Mike Gallego, who had been 0 for 6 since coming off the disabled list Tuesday and had hit only 40 homers in 10 seasons in the majors.

Then he gave up five hits and six runs in the fifth inning, forcing Lachemann to reluctantly walk to the mound and summon help for his ace from a bullpen that hasn’t provided much aid in the Angels’ time of need.

“It really came down to four or five bad pitches in a row, when I needed to get an out,” Finley said. “You just can’t expect to do that and win.

“Looking back on it, I’m very disappointed. It’s especially frustrating because you hate to waste that kind of offense.”

It has been a weird season for Finley, who started slow, failing to win in April for the first time in his career. He won four in a row between May 8 and 24, allowing more than two runs in just one of those outings. But he fell out of that groove as fast as he slid into it and dropped five of his next six decisions.

He pitched very well at times and pretty darn poorly at others. The roller-coaster used to be for others to ride, Finley preferred the Bullet Train: a warm-up, a blur and another victory.

“Personally, I feel like I’ve thrown the ball like crap all year,” Finley said. “I’ve mixed in a few good games, a little streak here and there, but basically I’m disappointed. I know I can win games and I’m not doing it.”

At least Angel managers--five have had the pleasure of writing Finley’s name on the lineup card--could count on a bullpen-saving effort.

Last season, Finley led the league in complete games with 13 and this year he has pitched seven or more innings in 13 of his 20 starts. In the last three, however, he has averaged 5 2/3 innings per outing.

Lachemann admitted that he might have let Finley stay in too long, hoping the veteran left-hander would return to form.

“You have a tendency to do that with him,” Lachemann said, “because he’s worked himself out of so many jams like that over the years.”