BASEBALL / DAILY REPORT : ANGELS : Help Wanted Sign Is Hung Out

A starting rotation with Shawn Boskie and Mike Bielecki may have been frightening for Angel fans a month and a half ago. An even scarier thought: A rotation without Boskie and Bielecki.

Bielecki joined Boskie on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday because of tendinitis in his biceps, and the Angels are now scrambling for a starter for Friday’s game against Detroit and the weeks ahead.

“We’re looking at all our options,” General Manager Bill Bavasi said. Among them: Mark Holzemer, a left-hander who was called up from triple-A Vancouver last week, and Andrew Lorraine, a left-hander currently at Vancouver.

Holzemer, who went 2-2 with a 3.12 earned-run average at Vancouver, has been used primarily as a reliever this season but started his last four games at triple A. Lorraine is 5-5 with a 4.37 ERA but was scheduled to pitch Tuesday and wouldn’t be ready for Friday.

The Angels are scouring the waiver wire--Oakland’s Mike Harkey and Toronto’s Danny Darwin are two right-handed starters who were recently released--but Bavasi said any emergency move would not preclude a trade for a more prominent starter, such as Minnesota’s Kevin Tapani.

Manager Marcel Lachemann could also employ a bullpen-by-committee, with Mike Butcher, a starter in the minor leagues, opening the game.

“I’d go out with a groundskeeper’s uniform on just to get to the mound,” said Butcher, who hasn’t pitched since July 7. “I could probably throw 75 to 80 pitches.”

Lachemann, though, said he doesn’t want to “chew up the bullpen in one game.” He also will not go with a four-man rotation. “I’m not going to second-guess anyone else, but there are some people in four-man rotations who aren’t pitching as well as they were earlier in the season,” he said.

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Bielecki, who has had a sore arm for several weeks and gave up five homers in his last two starts, had trouble merging into the rehab lane Tuesday. “It’s no fun,” he said. “I’ve been on the DL for an hour, and [the training staff] is killing me.”

A magnetic resonance imaging test on Boskie’s inflamed elbow revealed no serious damage and he will not need surgery, but he’ll be out several weeks. . . . How did pitcher Brian Anderson, a native of nearby Geneva, Ohio, celebrate his victory over Cleveland Monday night?

“My dad and I sat on our back porch at 3 a.m. and killed two cigars,” Anderson said. “I think they were cheap ones because they already had the ends bit out. But I did not inhale. . . . Are you kidding me? My lungs were hurting this morning.”