Angels Can’t Get It Going

The list of missing ingredients on this underachieving Angel team grew by one after Saturday’s 7-3 loss to the New York Yankees, the Angels’ sixth consecutive defeat and 10th in their last 11 games.

As if shaky starting pitching, inconsistent middle relief, a lack of power and an absence of clutch hitting weren’t enough to depress the Angels, Chili Davis exposed yet another deficiency.

“I do have to say for the record that this team misses Tony Phillips,” Davis said of the fiery leadoff hitter, the 1995 offensive sparkplug who now plays left field--at least, when he’s not chasing hecklers in the bleachers--for the Chicago White Sox.

“We miss him a lot--his spunk, his attitude. I know [Angel front-office officials] don’t want to hear that, and it’s not that [leadoff batter] Randy Velarde isn’t doing his job. I wish we could have both of them.

“We still have a good club, but sometimes presence goes overlooked in this game. Some players have a presence that rubs off on other guys, and we don’t have that presence now.”

Would such a “presence” have prevented the Angels from going one for 12 with runners in scoring position Saturday, and losing despite outhitting the Yankees, 11-6? Probably not.

Would it have helped left fielder Garret Anderson make a shoe-string catch of Paul O’Neill’s fifth-inning flare instead of having the ball skid by him for a two-run double in the Yankees’ game-clinching, six-run inning? Nope.

Would it have spurred pitcher Shad Williams, making his major league debut before 22,821 in Yankee Stadium, to throw one more perfect pitch to wiggle out of that fifth-inning jam? No way.

Would it have prevented Yankee players from making four diving catches? Absolutely not.

But the Angels do lack some spark, a leader who can light a fire under an explosive team that can’t seem to find its fuse. And the problem is, they don’t seem to have a player who can fill that role.

“You can’t ask people to act out of character,” said Davis, who had an RBI single in the ninth inning. “I’m not very boisterous, and neither are a lot of guys in here. That’s just the way your makeup is. But I truly believe we’ll turn this around. We’re [7 1/2] games back, we can get on a roll and make up that ground easily.”

The Angels found themselves in another ditch Saturday. Williams, effectively mixing his fastball and slider, threw four scoreless innings, striking out O’Neill and Tino Martinez with a runner on third to end the third inning.

But Velarde’s error on Derek Jeter’s one-hop smash to start the fifth began a rally that included O’Neill’s two-run double and Gerald Williams’ broken-bat, two-run double down the left field line off reliever Shawn Boskie.

The Angels, meanwhile, had runners on first and second with no outs in the fourth and two on and one out in the fifth but couldn’t score off left-hander Kenny Rogers, who improved his career record against the Angels to 9-1 with a 2.63 earned-run average.

Velarde singled and Anderson doubled to open the seventh, and Don Slaught’s RBI groundout and Rex Hudler’s sacrifice fly cut the Yankee lead to 6-2. But reliever Steve Howe got Anderson to hit into a 1-2-3 double play with the bases loaded to end the eighth.

“We need to stop getting down by a few runs early,” center fielder Jim Edmonds said. “We got good pitching today by a guy making his big league debut and we didn’t help him. All we needed was one or two runs, and we couldn’t get them.”

The Angels are in last place in the American League West for the fifth consecutive day.

“But it’s too early to be looking at the standings,” Edmonds said. “We have to worry about ourselves, not the Rangers. If we keep losing, there’s no point in worrying about the standings, because we’ll be 100 games back. The other teams could be losing too, but unless you’re winning, you can’t catch them.”