Angels Hit Dry Spell at Home : Baseball: Some players are injured, some make errors as division leaders look for answers after 5-2 loss to Texas.

This was inevitable, the Angels say. You spend 2 1/2 weeks looking like the Big Red Machine, and then you hit a stretch where you look like a 1976 Pinto.

The flip side continued Sunday for the Angels, who lost to the Texas Rangers, 5-2, in front of an announced crowd of 23,342 in Anaheim Stadium.

It was the Angels’ third loss in the last four games, their second in the past three to the second-place Rangers, but there were no signs of panic in the clubhouse afterward. The Angels, remember, have a 10-game lead in the American League West.

Still, an unsettling feeling seemed to permeate the room. There was All-Star shortstop Gary DiSarcina, the team’s best defensive player and a .317 hitter, with his left thumb in a splint as he prepares for Tuesday’s surgery that probably will end his season.

There was third baseman Tony Phillips, his sore right hamstring iced and due for a cortisone shot today, saying some of the Angels “are going through a little dead period.”

There was center fielder Jim Edmonds, already bothered by a sore foot, recalling his first-inning crash into the fence in pursuit of Will Clark’s RBI double. What part of your body hit the wall? “Everything,” Edmonds said with a wince.

There was Manager Marcel Lachemann expressing more displeasure with the manner in which the Angels are losing--fundamental breakdowns, mental lapses and errors (seven by the left side of the infield in the last three games)--than the actual losses.

And there was General Manager Bill Bavasi and Assistant GM Tim Mead buzzing around the clubhouse, ducking into Lachemann’s office and making a roster move they hope will bring some relief to this team, calling outfielder Orlando Palmeiro up from triple-A Vancouver and sending down reliever Mark Holzemer.

Watch enough of this, and you sense this team is clinging to a double-digit lead.

“Like I said before, this game has cycles, and you’re not going to play every day like we have for the last three weeks,” Lachemann said. “We’re going to get hot again. We’re not going to be held to two, three or four runs every night. We just have to play hard, execute, and things will take care of themselves.”

The mind may be willing, but are the bodies able? It’s a shorter season, but August is here, the nagging injuries are mounting, temperatures are rising, and the schedule is grueling--the Angels are in a stretch in which they play 27 games in 27 days.

“Guys are coming up tired, guys on other teams are tired, these are the dog days and this is what happens,” Phillips said. “When you’re tired mentally and physically you get sloppy, but that’s when you have to kick yourself in the butt. Because if you stay in this funk, you’re going to be in trouble.”

An Angel offense that has averaged 7.7 runs per game since the All-Star break looked sluggish against Texas right-hander Roger Pavlik, the same guy the Angels rocked for eight runs in the first inning of a 20-4 victory June 29.

Pavlik, changing speeds, mixing pitches and hitting spots, gave up only seven hits in 7 2/3 innings--just two infield singles in the first five innings--and struck out six to improve to 6-6.

The Angels committed two errors, one by pitcher Brian Anderson that led to an unearned run in the first inning. The other was by shortstop Rod Correia, which didn’t cost any runs in the second inning but served as another reminder of a DiSarcina-less defense.

Anderson did not pitch poorly--he went 7 1/3 innings, giving up five runs on eight hits--but his error aided a two-run first, and he hit Jeff Frye on an 0-2 pitch to start the seventh. Frye eventually scored on Otis Nixon’s double, and Nixon scored on Lou Frazier’s infield single for a 4-0 lead.

The Angels stirred in the eighth when J.T. Snow singled and scored on Spike Owen’s pinch RBI double. Chili Davis’ RBI single made it 5-2 in the ninth, and the Angels loaded the bases with two out, but reliever Ed Vosberg got rookie Garret Anderson to swing and miss at three breaking balls to end the game.

“I’d like to stick this game somewhere else in the schedule, hide it with one of Texas’ losses,” Brian Anderson said. “It’s more magnified because when you lose and they win, they pick up a game on you. But you’re not going to go through a whole season without your share of blunders. We just need to knuckle down and do a better job.”