Not the Start He Foresaw : Baseball: Lachemann faces his first spring as Angels’ manager amid uncertainty and unknown players.

Those nagging questions that seem to face the Angels every spring--Who will play first base? How can they add some punch to the lineup? What about the fourth and fifth spots in the pitching rotation?--have been put on hold this season.

When aspiring Angel pitchers and catchers begin workouts this morning and are joined by position players Wednesday at Gene Autry Park in Mesa, they’ll be accompanied by a whole new set of perplexing questions:

Who is that on first? Do you know anyone in their lineup? Has that guy pitched in the last five years?

It seems like a cruel joke, really. You take in the scene at sun-splashed Tempe Diablo Stadium, where groundskeepers were putting the finishing touches to a perfectly manicured field Thursday, and it has the look, feel and smell of spring training.

But it isn’t. The major leaguers are not here. A bunch of aging minor leaguers, including a few who have been retired for years, and a number of younger players just trying to land jobs in the Angel farm system, are here.

Yes, they’re the replacement players we’ve heard so much about during this continuing baseball strike.

“They look like . . . a replacement team, unfortunately,” Angel General Manager Bill Bavasi said.

Bavasi admits that coming to this spring training has been a letdown.

“But not because of the replacement players,” he said. “It’s because we don’t have any peace in this sport.

“We don’t have the right guys here. We know that. But we want to make sure to treat replacements with respect and appreciation. Everyone wants the real players, but these guys are keepers of the flame right now.”

Today, Manager Marcel Lachemann will begin to find out whether any are throwers of the flame. Of the 45-50 players expected in camp, 28 are pitchers, but only three--right-handers Tony Mack and James Campbell and left-hander Frank DiMichelle--have any major league experience.

Mack started once for the Angels in 1985, giving up four runs in 2 1/3 innings; DiMichelle appeared in four games as an Angel reliever in 1988, posting a 9.64 earned-run average, and Campbell appeared in two games (1-0, 8.38 ERA) for the Kansas City Royals in 1990.

Asked if he had any idea what talent level an Angel replacement team would have, Lachemann replied, “From the numbers I’ve seen, it’s hard to tell because they haven’t performed at this level. . . . No, to answer your question. But we’ll do what we need to do.”

This is not how Lachemann, the former Angel pitching coach who replaced the fired Buck Rodgers last year, envisioned his first spring as a major league manager.

Instead of fine-tuning Mark Langston and Chuck Finley, Lachemann will spend the next few days trying to determine whether Doug Robertson, a former Cal State Fullerton right-hander who hasn’t played professionally since 1991, and Bryan Smith, a 32-year-old left-hander who last played pro ball in 1987, still can pitch.

And he’ll be hoping the knees of one of the Angels’ catching prospects, 33-year-old Phil Ouellette, whose 10-year career ended in 1990 and included only 10 games in the big leagues, at San Francisco in 1986, don’t give out.

“I’m not very proud to be attached to what’s going on now--no one in baseball should be,” Lachemann said. “But baseball is my life, and I’m looking forward to getting back to baseball.”

Bavasi said, “Hey, it’s better than what we’ve been doing this off-season. It’s a real crapshoot with the replacements, but we’ll have guys who will play hard and love to play and that can’t be minimized.”

The use of replacement players has drawn the wrath of most major leaguers and the agents who represent them, people who, like the players, are losing millions of dollars because of the strike.

“It’s the biggest farce I’ve ever seen,” said agent Alan Hendricks, whose client list includes Angel pitchers Finley, Russ Springer and Mitch Williams. “And it’s astonishing to hear fans say they’ll watch replacement games. It makes me think that maybe P.T. Barnum (who said, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’) was right.”

The replacements can feel that resentment. They know major leaguers and hard-core baseball fans will look down their noses at them, and they’re already starting to develop an us-against-the-world mentality.

“Everyone looks at replacement players as clerks, truck drivers and plumbers, but you look at the guys here and you can tell they’re gifted athletes,” said Carlos Castillo, a 24-year-old pitcher from Loara High and Cypress College who will be in the Angels’ camp but has not decided whether he will cross the union’s picket line, even if it’s only an imaginary one.

“For the media and big leaguers to criticize us as they have, it’s pretty sad. We get no respect. You put me up against any truck driver, plumber or surfer and I guarantee you I’ll beat them 10 times out of 10.”