Underachieving Angels Lose Again

Another day, another three-run lead gone kaput, another questionable managerial move, and another loss to a team that should have been dominated.

No, this hasn’t been a very good trip for the Angels, who fell to the Detroit Tigers, 5-4, Sunday when Mark Lewis singled off reliever Mike James with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to score pinch-runner Kimera Bartee from second and break a 4-4 tie.

The Angels have lost four of their last six games to Detroit and Toronto, rebuilding teams that aren’t expected to contend in the American League East, and while there’s no sense of panic in the Angel clubhouse, a team picked by many to win the AL West is 5-6.

“We haven’t clicked yet,” said Mark Langston, who pitched well enough to win Sunday, giving up four runs and six hits in seven innings. “There are some good signs, but we’re not getting it all the way done.”

Another sparse Tiger Stadium crowd--it was announced at 12,009, bringing the three-day total to 33,649--saw pinch-hitter Bobby Higginson open the ninth with a walk. Bartee came on to run and was sacrificed to second by John Flaherty.

Detroit Manager Buddy Bell’s decision to send left-handed hitting Tim Hyers up for Alan Trammell was greeted with boos, but could you blame Tiger fans?

Trammell is a potential Hall of Fame shortstop with 992 career runs batted in, “one of the best clutch hitters I’ve ever seen,” Angel catcher Don Slaught said. Hyers, who has seven big league RBIs, was hitting .174 at triple-A Toledo when he was recalled Sunday.

But Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann answered a question with a question--he had James, a right-hander, walk Hyers intentionally to pitch to Chad Curtis, the speedy Tiger leadoff batter who had two singles and is batting .327.

James struck out Curtis, but the decision to walk Hyers backfired when Lewis, who is batting .302, lined a 0-1 fastball to center for his game-winning hit.

“It was strictly a left-right thing,” Lachemann said. “There were two right-handed guys coming up and we wanted to set up a possible double play. We didn’t know much about Hyers, which was part of the problem, but he’s left-handed and probably hits right-handers better.”

Slaught, who hit a two-run homer in the second and singled and scored in the fifth, admitted he “would have been guessing the whole time” had the Angels pitched to Hyers.

“But we set up a double play with a pitcher who gets a lot of ground balls with his sinker,” he said. “We made the decision and it didn’t work out.”

Had the Angels executed a sacrifice bunt in the sixth or capitalized on a fourth-inning scoring opportunity, Lachemann might not have had to make such a difficult ninth-inning decision.

The Angels, on the strength of Chili Davis’ single, Garret Anderson’s double and Slaught’s homer, took a 3-0 lead in the second off Scott Aldred, who entered with a 15.95 earned-run average. But for the third time in the last four days, the Angels blew a three-run lead.

The Tigers’ four-run third included a bunt single, an infield single, two walks, a run-scoring groundout and a run-scoring fielder’s choice. The only balls to leave the infield were RBI singles by Eddie Williams and Danny Bautista.

Davis opened the fourth with a double and took third on Snow’s ground-ball out, but Anderson struck out and Arias, the struggling rookie third baseman, lined to third.

Tim Salmon’s RBI single made the score, 4-4, in the fifth. Snow walked and Anderson singled to open the sixth, but Tiger reliever Mike Christopher made a nice play of Arias’ sacrifice attempt, forcing Snow at third on a very close play. Slaught flied to deep left and Gary DiSarcina grounded out to end the threat.