Angels’ Late-Season Collapse Brings Back Bad Memories : Baseball: The end this time didn’t come as quickly as it did in 1986, but one abrupt turn of events in Anaheim Stadium is hauntingly familiar.

The end for the 1995 Angels did not come nearly as swift as it did for the 1986 Angels, who were one out away from the World Series before blowing Game 5 and losing to Boston in the American League playoffs.

Compared to calamitous 1986, when the typhoon that was Donnie Moore-to-Dave Henderson blew through Anaheim and left complete destruction in its wake, the end of 1995 was more a persistent rainstorm, with dark clouds hovering above the Angels for six weeks.

The 1995 Angels simply withered away, losing 29 of their last 43 games, blowing an 11-game lead in the American League West and joining the 1978 Red Sox, 1969 Cubs, 1964 Phillies and 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers in baseball infamy.

But the Angels’ final chapter this season did include a Game 5 moment, an abrupt turn of events in Anaheim Stadium that was hauntingly familiar to those of the 1986 playoffs, and it may have contributed to their ultimate downfall.

Though the Angels staggered into September, their nine-game losing streak finally ending on Sept. 4, they showed signs of recovery on Sept. 11 and 12, when Shawn Boskie pitched a five-hitter to beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-1, and Mark Langston gave up only six hits in seven innings to beat the White Sox, 3-1.

The Angels had a six-game lead over Seattle, and the two victories marked the first back-to-back quality starts for struggling Angel pitchers in weeks.

Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann believes good pitching, like hitting, can be contagious, and Chuck Finley affirmed that belief the next night, when he pitched seven shutout innings against the White Sox Sept. 13.

The Angels took a 1-0 lead over Chicago in the fifth, Minnesota was leading Seattle, and if both leads held up, the Angel magic number would fall from 11 to 9 with 15 games remaining.

But Lachemann, following the same strategy he used all season, pulled Finley for rookie setup man Troy Percival to start the eighth, just as 1986 Manager Gene Mauch, playing the percentages, pulled starter Mike Witt for left-hander Gary Lucas in the ninth inning of Game 5.

And, like Game 5 in ‘86, disaster struck. Percival, who had been virtually untouchable for most of the summer, gave up a single to Robin Ventura and a two-run home run to Frank Thomas, and the White Sox went on to win, 6-1.

Just as Garret Anderson struck out to end the game, Seattle’s Jay Buhner hit a three-run home run to lift the Mariners to a 7-4 victory over Minnesota, moving Seattle to within five games of first place.

The closing tandem of Percival and Lee Smith had worked wonders for Lachemann all season, but that Sept. 13 pitching change was ripe for second-guessing.

Percival was making his fifth appearance in six days and didn’t appear as sharp as usual. And when your ace has a shutout, has thrown only 109 pitches and has retired the side in order in the seventh, shouldn’t he stay in the game?

At the very least, shouldn’t Finley have pitched to the left-handed Ventura to open the eighth?

Lachemann stood by his decision, but several players privately questioned the move. This much was clear: It took the Angels almost two weeks to recover.

They went into another tailspin after that loss, losing their next eight games and going 75 innings without a lead, and what was once an 11-game lead in the West evaporated.

Seattle got hot at the right time and flew past the Angels Sept. 22, and there was no wild-card cushion, because the New York Yankees also came on in September to grab a playoff berth.

The Angels closed the regular season on a high note, winning five consecutive games to force Monday’s one-game playoff against the Mariners for the A.L. West title, a game Seattle won, 9-1. And looking at the big picture, the Angels improved from a league-worst 47-68 to 78-67.

That may help ease some of the off-season pain, but this will always be their legacy: According to the Elias Sports Bureau, when the Angels went from 10 1/2 games ahead on Aug. 16 to a first-place tie with the Mariners on Sept. 20, it was the quickest disappearance--35 days--of a lead that large in this century.

“It’s a very sickening feeling, and you never get over it,” said Angel third-base coach Rick Burleson, the shortstop on the ’78 Red Sox team that blew a 14-game lead. “You live with it for the rest of your life, and you’re always reminded of it when it happens again.”

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What happened? In a nutshell, the Angel offense lost its punch, the starting pitchers lost their touch and the entire team lost its confidence.

“Every phase of our game was shaken, and your concentration tends to slip when you’re not feeling confident,” shortstop Gary DiSarcina said.

“We lost that intimidation, that edge, the feeling that we were going to go out and hammer teams . . . we lost the feeling of what it’s like to win.”

The Angels also lost their shortstop, a crushing blow. DiSarcina was batting .317 with 26 doubles, five homers and 41 RBIs when he tore the ulna ligament in his thumb breaking up a double play Aug. 3.

Lachemann tried a mishmash of middle infield combinations for seven weeks but none clicked. Four shortstops combined to hit .210 with five extra-base hits, 13 RBIs and eight errors in 44 games before DiSarcina returned to the starting lineup Sept. 22. The Angels went 16-29 without him.

“If this team can’t survive the loss of a No. 9 hitter, maybe we’re not as good as we thought we were,” DiSarcina said.

Angel starting pitchers went into a horrendous slump. From Aug. 16 through the end of the season, starters combined for a 10-24 record and 6.35 earned-run average in 42 games. They went fewer than six innings in 18 of those games.

Finley, the ace of the staff and a $4.5-million left-hander, went winless from Aug. 24-Sept. 27. Langston ($5 million) finished with an impressive 15-6 record but was inconsistent in September, pitching well one start and getting bombed the next two.

Jim Abbott, acquired in a July 27 trade and believed to be the final piece to the Angel playoff puzzle, was brilliant on the road (4-1, 1.51 ERA) but ineffective at home (0-3, 7.54 ERA).

Brian Anderson allowed 12 homers in five consecutive starts from Aug. 16-Sept. 5 and was pulled from the rotation. Shawn Boskie’s September stats pretty much sum up his month: 1-5, 7.71 ERA.

Even the two most reliable relievers had their failings, Percival losing two games in one week in September and Smith giving up a home run to Minnesota’s Dan Masteller in the bottom of the ninth for a blown save on Sept. 10.

The Angels had a 7-1 lead in the fourth inning that day but lost to the worst team in baseball, 9-8, in 10 innings, yet another in a long line of middle relief breakdowns.

From mid-August on, the Angels seemed to be in an endless rut of falling behind early and pressing to catch up. During one 8-27 stretch they were outscored, 53-14, in the first inning and were ahead in only 59 of 318 innings.

Angel hitters had a blast after the All-Star break, averaging about seven runs while winning 17 of 20 games, but outside of right fielder Tim Salmon, the offense went into a collective funk in August.

The Angels averaged 6.2 runs a game through Aug. 15 but 3.9 runs a game the rest of the season.

Leadoff batter Tony Phillips, a catalyst for four months, went from a high of .299 on July 30 to .261 by season’s end, his strikeout total (81) practically doubling his walk total (42) in the last two months.

Center fielder Jim Edmonds, a most valuable player candidate in early August, went from .315 on Aug. 20 to .290 and had only 12 RBIs in his final 35 games. Designated hitter Chili Davis was batting .342 with 67 RBIs on Aug. 24. He finished with a .318 average and 86 RBIs.

First baseman J.T. Snow’s average fell from .325 on July 24 to .289, left fielder Anderson fell from .360 on Aug. 13 to .321, and second baseman Damion Easley spent the whole season on the .210 freeway.

Injuries took their toll on Phillips (sore hamstring), Edmonds (two strained lower back muscles, sore foot), Davis (strained hamstring), Easley (sprained knee, sore wrist) and Langston (tendinitis) in the final 1 1/2 months, and inexperience--five Angel regulars have three years or less in the major leagues--didn’t help.

There were numerous team meetings and occasional emotional outbursts in the clubhouse, but the Angels lacked a real vocal leader, the kind of player who could inspire teammates.

The Angel veterans--Finley, Langston, Davis, Salmon and DiSarcina--are quiet, by nature, and it was hard for a guy like Phillips, one of the few fiery types in the clubhouse, to scream and yell at a teammate when he was hitting less than .200 for a month.

“What’s a guy gonna do, get up and yell, and that’s gonna make us play better?” Phillips said. “We had everything it takes right here. It just didn’t happen. We went into the tank. We stopped pitching and stopped hitting.”

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How much of the collapse was Lachemann’s fault? All of it, if you were to believe him. After a 4-0 loss to Baltimore on Aug. 27, Lachemann said if the Angels don’t win the division, “they should get rid of the manager.”

The Angels had a 7 1/2-game lead at that point, and things only got worse. Lachemann continued to take blame through September for not motivating his players, not getting them to relax, but it was obvious he was trying to deflect the heat from his players and toward him.

A noble gesture, but Lachemann wasn’t the one giving up first-inning home runs, striking out with runners on base, missing the cut-off man.

In his first full season as a manager, Lachemann certainly made some tactical errors--pulling Finley against the White Sox that night was probably his biggest--and not bringing Percival in to face Seattle’s Luis Sojo in the seventh inning Monday was another.

He deserves some criticism for not resting his starters enough during July and August, when the Angels played 46 games in 47 days.

But there wasn’t much more he could do to stop the free-fall. How much strategy can you employ when you’re losing, 6-1, in the second inning?

Some thought Lachemann should have torn apart a clubhouse or got tossed from a few more games in an effort to spark his team, but that’s not Lachemann’s style.

He’s about as even-keeled as managers come, a workaholic whose strength is in preparation, and any extreme emotional outburst would have been perceived by the players as an act of desperation, not motivation.

The bottom line is this: While the Angels may not have been as bad as they were in late August and September, they certainly were not as good as the team that terrorized the American League after the All-Star break.

Their starting rotation included, at various points, four pitchers who had been released in the past year--Boskie, Mike Harkey, Mike Bielecki and Scott Sanderson.

The Angels had one of the weakest benches in the league--that’s probably why Lachemann played his starters so much in July and early August--and a questionable middle relief corps.

Once DiSarcina went down, the Angels got very little production out of the bottom of the order. Throw in Phillips’ slump, and there weren’t many RBI opportunities for Edmonds in the No. 2 spot the past two months.

This also was a very young team with a manager in his first full year that had never experienced the pressure of a pennant race.

“There’s a lot of young kids here still trying to find their niche,” Phillips said. “Some will become vocal, some will stay to themselves. This is the first time they’ve been in a pennant race, but how can they not learn from this? They’ll be better because of the experience.”

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Where do they go from here?

In July, the Angels appeared to have a team worth keeping together for another year or two. But there will most likely be changes in the wake of their late-season collapse.

Phillips’ final statistics were impressive--26 home runs, 113 walks, 118 runs, but he also struck out 134 times and was at times a defensive liability at third. Some in the organization are tired of his on-field histrionics, and at 36 with sore hamstrings, there are questions about his durability.

Phillips, a free agent who received $2 million from the Angels this season, would like a two-year contract, but it’s highly unlikely the Angels will make that kind of commitment.

There is also speculation the Angels will attempt to trade Smith this winter, because Percival appears ready for the closer role, and Smith’s $2 million salary for 1996 could be used to pursue a starting pitcher or a leadoff batter.

The team’s top priorities in the off-season will be re-signing Finley and Abbott. The Finley negotiations shouldn’t be difficult--he wants to stay and has offered to take a pay cut to remain in Anaheim, and the Angels want him.

The Abbott negotiations, however, could be acrimonious. Agent Scott Boras holds a trump card--he knows the Angels don’t want to let Abbott get away again, as they did in 1992, and look for him to play that against the team.

The Walt Disney Co., expected to take over team operations about Nov. 1, must decide whether to pay Abbott what his agent will ask for--likely in the $3 million range--or what he’s worth--no more than $2 million a year.

It also must decide whether to offer multiyear contracts to young standouts such as Edmonds, Snow, Anderson and Percival before they become free agents or are eligible for arbitration.

Anderson will likely get another chance in 1996, but the Angels still need a quality right-hander to complete the rotation and could spend their free-agent dollars there.

Catching has also been a weak spot--look for power-hitting Todd Greene, Baseball Weekly’s minor league player of the year in 1995, to challenge for the job next spring--and the bench needs to be upgraded.

How the Angels deal with the frustration of 1995 will also have a bearing on ’96. Will they be scarred by the collapse or use it as a motivating tool?

“As tough as this season was, this is a young club, and for these guys to get a taste of a pennant race this early in their career should be a big lift,” General Manager Bill Bavasi said. “If I do my job right [this winter] we should have a chance to do it again.”