BASEBALL / DAILY REPORT : ANGELS : Langston Dances Around Arm Questions

It was a simple question to pitcher Mark Langston: Is your arm healthy? The answer wasn’t so simple.

“I’ve got two more starts, I’ll do whatever it takes,” said Langston, who gave up seven runs and nine hits in Friday night’s 8-3 loss to the Rangers. “I’ve just got to execute, make my pitches.”

But is there any pain, any lingering soreness from the elbow and shoulder tendinitis that bothered you in July?

“I feel I can still do my job, like I can contribute,” Langston said. “I feel I have some fight left.”

Manager Marcel Lachemann said Langston had tendinitis in the biceps area. Langston seems determined to live down the “gutless” label that former manager Dick Williams tagged on him a few years ago. He has been ineffective in his last two starts, giving up 14 runs and 16 hits in losses to Kansas City and Texas, but he doesn’t use a sore arm as an excuse.

He has two more scheduled starts this season, Wednesday at Seattle and Oct. 1 against Oakland on the last day of the season. He’ll make the second one only if the Angels are still in the American League West or wild-card race. He plans to make both.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes, whatever I can,” Langston said. “You can roll over and die or keep fighting. I’m not giving up.”

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Lachemann said before Saturday night’s game that Andy Allanson, who was in the starting lineup for the second night in a row, might catch the Angels’ remaining seven games because he “does a good job handling pitchers and catching games, and right now that’s more important than hitting.”

Allanson’s first-inning performance may have landed him back on the bench, though. He couldn’t stop a ball in the dirt that was ruled a wild pitch, enabling Otis Nixon to advance to second, and he misplayed a pitch into a passed ball that allowed Mark McLemore to advance to third and Will Clark to second.