Bad Start, Bad Finish Put End to Angel Win Streak

The Angels knew their winning streak would eventually end, but like this?

With Mark Langston, their most consistent starter, giving up two home runs on his first three pitches? With a defense that leads the American League in fielding percentage botching a fourth-inning rundown that led to two runs?

With Mike James, one of their most dependable relievers, giving up an eighth-inning run on three walks and a sacrifice fly, and a ninth-inning, game-winning triple to a reserve who was hitting .103?

“It was just a muddy, ugly game,” Langston said Thursday after the Angels’ 6-5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, which ended a seven-game winning streak. “It was a miserable day to play baseball, really.”

It was a drizzly, dreary afternoon in County Stadium, but it almost became a day to rejoice for the Angels, who erased a 4-0 deficit with a four-run seventh that included RBI singles by Don Slaught and Gary DiSarcina and Jim Edmonds’ two-run single.

And even after James, who had a 4-1 record and 1.42 earned-run average, lost the strike zone and gave up the eighth-inning run, the Angels came back again in the ninth.

Jack Howell’s single, pinch-hitter J.T. Snow’s double and Randy Velarde’s RBI single off Brewer closer Mike Fetters tied the game, 5-5, and the Angels had runners on first and third with Edmonds, their best hitter this season, at the plate.

But Edmonds smashed a grounder right at second baseman Mark Loretta, who started an inning-ending double play.

Then came a Brewer ninth that defied logic. Pat Listach, who has 13 hits in his last 28 at-bats, opened by striking out. Tim Unroe, a defensive replacement in the eighth, then singled for the third hit . . . of his career.

Turner Ward, another defensive replacement who had one hit in his previous 20 at-bats, then smashed a curveball by James into the right-center gap, Unroe scoring easily with the winning run.

The Brewers had a 2-0 lead almost as soon as the County Stadium ground crew removed the tarpaulin. Jeff Cirillo hit Langston’s first pitch into the left-center bleachers, then Listach sent his third pitch into the left-field bleachers for his first homer since Sept. 6, 1993.

“I’ve never pitched in Wrigley Field with the wind blowing out, but I can imagine what that’s like after today,” Langston said. “I thought those were routine fly balls and they went out. . . . It was kind of shocking, really.”

Kevin Seitzer then doubled over right fielder Tim Salmon’s head, but Langston retired the next three batters and ended up pitching seven innings, yielding nine hits.

A defensive lapse might have cost Langston--and the Angels--a victory. With two outs in the fourth, Jose Valentin on second and Mike Matheny on first, the Brewers tried a double steal.

Slaught, the Angel catcher, threw to second in an attempt to cut down the slower runner, but Matheny stopped well before the bag and was caught in a rundown. Valentin started toward home and Velarde, the Angel second baseman, threw back to Slaught in time to catch Valentin in a second rundown.

But as Slaught ran Valentin back, he threw late to third baseman George Arias. Valentin bumped into Arias, who couldn’t make the catch and tag, and DiSarcina, the Angel shortstop who was sprinting to third to back up the play, couldn’t make a diving grab of the ball, which bounced into left field, allowing Valentin to score. Cirillo then singled for a 4-0 lead.

“That inning should have been over,” Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann said. “We didn’t execute--it’s one of the first times we haven’t this season--and it cost us the game.”

Said Slaught, “I messed it up.”