Pranks Precede Pratfalls : Baseball: Error-prone Angels lack focus after pregame frivolity and are beaten, 7-3, by Twins.

Tim Salmon took a called third strike in the sixth inning Wednesday night and, as he headed toward the dugout, he flipped his bat up in the air . . . and dropped it.

It was that kind of evening--and worse--for the Angels, who were beaten, 7-3, by the Minnesota Twins before an announced crowd of 9,339 in the Metrodome.

The Angels had gone 51 consecutive innings without an error before reaching Minnesota, but they committed three Wednesday night, which helped the Twins score five unearned runs against starter and loser Chuck Finley (0-4).

Add the two errors from Monday’s loss to the Twins and one from Tuesday’s victory, and that means six Angel errors--or 40% of their season total (15)--have come in Minnesota this week.

Only Fuad Reveiz kicks the ball around the Metrodome more.

“You can’t blame one person,” said Angel shortstop Gary DiSarcina, who had one of the miscues. “Everyone is going to make physical errors, but it’s the mental ones you can’t make. We fell asleep at times out there.”

Third baseman Eduardo Perez made the other two errors, but it was a mental lapse, and an overall lack of concentration, that disappointed Manager Marcel Lachemann the most.

The low point came in the sixth inning after Kirby Puckett singled with runners on first and second. Chuck Knoblauch beat Angel center fielder Jim Edmonds’ throw home, and Jeff Reboulet took third on the throw.

But no one was covering second base after catcher Greg Myers threw to third, and Puckett trotted to the bag.

“We played very poorly,” Lachemann said. “I won’t forget it, and my job is to make sure they don’t forget it. If you learn from it, fine. If you just let it go, then it’s really a waste.”

A night that began with such frivolity for the Angels--reliever Mitch Williams was the ringleader of a pregame prank that left strength and conditioning consultant Tom Wilson doused in shaving cream, ketchup, salad dressing and Pepto-Bismol, among other things--turned sour almost immediately.

The Angels put runners on first and second with none out in the first inning and didn’t score. J.T. Snow hit a one-out double in the second and didn’t score. DiSarcina reached third on an error with none out in the third and didn’t score.

Perez’s fielding error aided the Twins’ three-run second. Dave McCarty led off the fourth with a grounder to third, but Perez’s throw pulled Snow off the base at first. McCarty later scored on Knoblauch’s sacrifice fly to give the Twins a 4-0 lead.

Angel frustrations mounted and tempers flared. Edmonds argued home-plate umpire Larry McCoy’s third-strike call in the fourth, and Perez, after being thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double in the fifth, had a quick, but heated, exchange with umpire John Hirschbeck.

“We can’t bitch and moan about every little thing or let calls that go against us get to our heads,” DiSarcina said. “This was one of those games where we were fighting ourselves, and you can’t play that way. Everyone is guilty of that at certain times, but everyone was tonight. That’s why it seems so bad.”

Edmonds homered to center in the seventh and Chili Davis blasted a two-run homer to right in the eighth to ease some of the pain, but the offense came long after Finley was gone.

The left-hander was not very sharp--he gave up eight hits, including Marty Cordova’s two-run homer to left in the fifth, and walked four in 5 1/3 innings. He has lost his first four decisions of the season for the first time in his 10-year career.

Finley is used to a lack of offensive support. The Angels have scored only 12 runs in the five games Finley has started, five of those while he was in the contest. But Wednesday, he received little defensive support as well.

“We can’t be in a fog, we have to stay in the game and not let our minds wander,” DiSarcina said.