Angels Knock Stuffing Out of the Brewers, 13-6 : Baseball: They rack up 17 hits and two home runs to give Langston plenty of support.

Imagine finishing a huge Thanksgiving dinner, then ordering out for pizza. That’s how it has been lately for the Angels, who continue to load up at the plate like someone in a Las Vegas buffet line.

They gorged on Milwaukee pitching for 17 more hits and two home runs Friday night in a 13-6 victory over the Brewers before a paid crowd of 18,025 in County Stadium.

Rookie Garret Anderson had a career-high four hits and four runs batted in to increase his average to .342. Chili Davis and Tim Salmon each hit three-run home runs--Davis’ first-inning blast was his 13th of the season; Salmon, who also robbed Dave Nilsson of a homer with an eighth-inning grab over the wall, hit No. 19 in the second. Jim Edmonds had two hits and scored three runs as the Angels improved to 52-33.

Six Angel starters are batting .300 or better, and Tony Phillips, who reached .298 Friday, is close to pushing the .300 club to seven. They continue to lead the major leagues in runs (536) and have the American League’s individual leaders in runs (Phillips, 82) and RBIs (Edmonds, 78).

The Angels have won 13 of 16 games since the All-Star break and increased their lead in the AL West to nine games. They are batting .334 (199 for 595) with 29 home runs and 131 RBIS in that stretch and have scored 137 runs, an average of 8.6 a game.

“With this offense you just want to ride it out and see how far it carries you, because it can’t last the rest of the year,” said Phillips, who had two hits. “You don’t want to try to evaluate it too much . . . as long as it keeps happening.”

The Angels have been dominating opponents with big innings, taking the suspense out of many games early, and Friday night’s game was no different.

The Angels built an 8-0 lead in the third inning, at which point Milwaukee owner Bud Selig, baseball’s interim commissioner, was seen carrying his granddaughter through the press box and out the back door.

Quipped one scribe: “This is obviously not a sight for little children.”

This one was so lopsided every Angel starter had a hit . . . by the fifth inning. Every Angel starter had a hit or an RBI before two Brewers even came to the plate. The Angels hit into four double plays, committed four errors and still won easily.

“It’s baseball--there’s no explanation for it,” said Davis, whose first-inning blast carried into the bleachers in left-center field against Brewer starter Sid Roberson. “Teams that aren’t supposed to win do, and teams that are supposed to win don’t. It’s beautiful.”

But aren’t all these blowouts getting a bit old? Don’t the Angels long for a tense, one-run game every now and then?

“This is never boring,” Davis said. “Losing, 13-6, is boring. Winning, 13-6, is fun, because that means you get a chance to rake. We can’t change anything. We have to keep pounding the ball, putting pressure on the other team and giving our pitcher a cushion.

“The good thing is when you score a lot of runs, your pitcher can give up one, two, three runs and he doesn’t have to panic. Like [Thursday night], we were down, 3-0, and exploded [for a 9-3 victory]. The pitchers know that, so they just have to go out and throw their game.”

Angel starter Mark Langston did, but it wasn’t easy. The County Stadium mound, he said, was too steep and too soft, which forced him to change his mechanics on some pitches.

That, in turn, put too much stress on his elbow and was the reason he left with a 1-1 count on Greg Vaughn in the seventh inning. Langston gave up nine hits and five runs, three earned, in 6 1/3 innings to improve to 10-1.

“It’s a difficult mound to throw off--I think that’s why the Brewers have so many pitching injuries each year,” Langston said. “I felt some tightness in my elbow and figured that was a good time to get out.”

The run support--the Angels have scored 141 runs in his 19 starts (7.4 a game)--eased Langston’s pain.

“Our offense has been unbelievable,” Langston said. “It’s so hard to explain what it does for a pitcher. It just makes you go out and throw strikes. It’s a lot of fun to watch.”

* BEAT THE CLOCK: In the first game under baseball’s new speed-up rules, the Chicago Cubs defeated the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-0, in 2 hours 23 minutes. The first 10 games played Friday were completed more than 12 minutes faster than the previous average. C6