Indians Show Angels They Also Can Hit : Baseball: Cleveland jumps to 6-1 lead before California fights back to make it 7-7 after nine innings.

Advantage Cleveland. There wasn’t much question about that as the American League’s premier teams met at Anaheim Stadium Monday night.

From their formidable records and batting averages to their look-alike warm-up jerseys, there isn’t a great deal of difference between the Angels and Indians.

Except for pitching, that is. The Angels sent inconsistent Russ Springer, winner of one game in five starts, to the mound. Cleveland started nine-game winner Charles Nagy.

Soon enough, the Angels found themselves five runs down, an inauspicious start to their biggest series in years. If there were mismatches in the three-game series, Springer vs. Nagy on Monday and Mike Harkey (4-6) vs. Dennis Martinez (9-0) on Wednesday are it.

Chuck Finley (8-7) against Orel Hershiser (7-4 and making his Southern California return tonight) is probably a toss-up.

General Manager Bill Bavasi has been aggressively pursuing another starter, hoping a trade will bolster the Angels’ rotation. They could have used the help Monday.

Still, their offense was again strong enough to make a game of it. The Angels and Cleveland were tied, 7-7, in the 10th inning in front of an announced crowd of 30,367.

Nagy held the AL’s top run-scoring team reasonably in check, but Springer lasted only 3 1/3 innings against the league’s second-best offense.

Springer gave up six runs and six hits in an ineffective performance. Mike Butcher came on in relief and held the Indians to only one run, on a run-scoring double by Wayne Kirby in the sixth, before being replaced by Mark Holzemer with one out in the seventh.

The Angels rallied from a 6-1 deficit with a three-run fourth and a single run in the fifth.

Before the game, Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann spent much of his daily session with reporters answering questions about the cosmic significance of the meeting between the AL’s top teams.

He made sure to point out often that the calender still reads July and not September.

“To look at it as a postseason preview would be real dangerous,” Lachemann said. “You’ve got the cart a little bit ahead of the horse. It’s an important series to see where we’re at. We don’t need to make any statements to another team. We don’t need to make any statements to anyone but ourselves.

“I’m looking forward to it. It’s a very good measuring stick.”

Designed hitter Chili Davis provided another voice of reason in the Angel clubhouse.

“I keep hearing, “Playoffs, playoffs, playoffs,” he said. “It’s not even August yet.”

If nothing else, the three-game series figured to provide something different at Anaheim Stadium in late July: drama, excitement, good baseball.

The two games last week in Cleveland served as mere warm-up for this week’s showdown.

What’s more, the teams split the games at Jacobs Field, so picking a clear-cut favorite was difficult. The Angels might have swept both games, but Albert Belle’s ninth-inning grand slam off Lee Smith gave the Indians a 7-5 victory and a split.

Cleveland’s lineup Monday featured five players batting .300 or better, led by right fielder Manny Ramirez, who went into the game hitting .330 with home runs and 65 runs batted in.

The Angels’ lineup featured six players batting .300 or better, led by Davis, who went into the game hitting .343 with 10 homers and 42 RBIs.