Angels Support, Impress Finley : Baseball: Veteran pitcher doesn’t see any letup after Fabregas, Edmonds key 8-4 victory over White Sox, the team’s sixth triumph in seven games.

With the Angels’ 30th victory in the bag, it fell to Chuck Finley, the team’s resident historian, to put recent events in perspective.

Rested and relaxed long after defeating the Chicago White Sox, 8-4, Sunday at Anaheim Stadium, Finley could draw from 10 seasons of good and bad Angel baseball.

“I don’t see us letting up,” said Finley, who gave up eight hits and three runs in seven strong innings. “It seems like somebody different steps up and we don’t have to rely on Chili [Davis] and [Tim] Salmon.”

Sunday, the Angels (30-19) leaned on light-hitting catcher Jorge Fabregas and center fielder Jim Edmonds to pick up their sixth victory in seven games. The victory lifted them to 11 games over the .500 mark, a mark they haven’t reached since the final day of the 1989 season.

Fabregas singled, doubled and hit his first major league home run, ending the longest homer-less streak of any active big leaguer at 180 at-bats. Edmonds singled, doubled and hit his ninth homer of the season.

Fabregas extended his hitting streak to seven games. Edmonds extended his streak to 14 games.

“I think [opposing pitchers] tend to focus on Chili and Salmon, then Edmonds jumps up and bites them,” Finley said. “It’s somebody new each and every night.

“I remember talking to Abby [Jim Abbott] when he joined the Yankees a couple years ago. He said, ‘Jeez, you pitch around two or three [Angels] and you’ve got it made.’

“I don’t see us stacking up like Cleveland one through nine in the order, but we can kill you in so many ways. We’re tough. We’re scrappy.”

Soon enough, the Angels could be exposed as frauds, crumbling in July or August, as so many past Angel teams have. But for the moment, they’re finding new ways to win. And, as all good teams should do, they’re beating up on the weaker teams.

They took two of three games from Minnesota, the American League’s weakest team, to start this homestand. Sunday, they completed a three-game sweep of the floundering White Sox, losers of eight of nine games. It was their first sweep of the White Sox at Anaheim Stadium since 1984.

“I felt like those guys would roll over and die,” said Finley, 5-5 with a 2.85 earned-run average. “I’ve been on the other end of it. It’s not pretty. You can tell by their body language they’d rather go on and get it over with so they can be somewhere else.”

So what happened Sunday?

Finley gave up a single and a double on his first two pitches and quickly fell behind, 2-0, in the first inning.

The Angels took the lead back, 4-2, in the bottom of the first, however. Davis’ three-run homer off Chicago starter Jason Bere (2-6) got them headed in the right direction.

Fabregas homered in the third. Garret Anderson added a run-scoring single in the fourth. Edmonds homered in the fifth, then drove in Fabregas with a single in the seventh.

“I think it’s contagious,” said Edmonds, who has raised his average from .230 to .287 during his hitting streak. “I was fighting through a slow start. I think I’ve just relaxed and let things happen.”

Edmonds also gave hitting coach Rod Carew credit for improving the Angels’ offensive output.

“Rod demands intense concentration at the plate,” Edmonds said. “Rod’s the kind of guy who has that presence. You walk by and you don’t want to look him in the face after a bad at-bat.”

The Angels didn’t have many disappointing at-bats Sunday, battering Bere and three relievers for eight runs and 12 hits.

Davis, batting .364 by game’s end, singled, doubled and homered but almost was shoved out of the spotlight by Fabregas and Edmonds.

“We’re getting a lot of pick-up from guys like Fabregas,” Davis said. “There’s a lot of balance.”

After a rocky first inning, Finley settled down to win for the fifth time in six starts. This stretch comes after Finley went winless in his first five starts.

“He gives up runs early, kind of struggles along and the next thing you know it’s the seventh inning and you’re winning,” Manager Marcel Lachemann said of Finley. “It’s that grind-it-out style that makes him so special.”