Angels Continue to Struggle Along

Their swagger of 1995 has been replaced by a limp. The confidence they once had against the American League’s elite teams has dissolved into doubt.

The Angels keep saying they need to step it up, kick it into gear, pick it up a notch--any of those tired cliches for struggling teams applies--but they remain stuck in quicksand, sinking deeper the more they flail their arms.

Consecutive loss No. 5 came Friday night at the hands of the Cleveland Indians, who rode the dominating arm of pitcher Jack McDowell, the hot bat of Angel slayer Jim Thome and a self-destructing Angel defense to a 4-3 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 42,260 in Jacobs Field.

The Angels wasted an outstanding effort by pitcher Shawn Boskie, they lost yet another starter, shortstop Gary DiSarcina, to a left hamstring injury, and they were left with the bitter taste of a promising ninth-inning rally that evaporated in a span of two pitches.

With the Angels trailing 4-2, Orlando Palmeiro walked and J.T. Snow singled to open the ninth, putting runners on first and third against Indian closer Jose Mesa. Up stepped Tim Salmon, the team’s hottest hitter with a .409 average and four homers in the last six games.

“I had a real good feeling,” Salmon said. “I felt like the situation was right, that we were going to come back and win. I felt as good as you can feel in a situation like that, nice and relaxed, not trying to do too much.”

He succeeded there. Salmon got jammed by a Mesa fastball, sending a grounder up the middle that Indian second baseman Carlos Baerga turned into an unassisted double play, with Palmeiro scoring. Garret Anderson grounded out on the next pitch, as Mesa notched his league-leading 21st save.

Two pitches. Three outs. End of game.

“I was so sure I was going to get a big hit,” Salmon said, still bewildered by the turn of events. “He wasn’t throwing strikes, I thought he’d leave something up and I’d crush it . . . and just the opposite happened.”

That’s the theme for the 1996 Angels, who were supposed to contend for the AL West and have done just the opposite, falling into a last-place tie with Oakland in the AL West, 8 1/2 games behind Texas. That’s their largest deficit since the end of the 1993 season.

And the road doesn’t get any easier. They’ll probably have to complete the Indian series without DiSarcina, who has a mild strain of his left hamstring and came out of the game in the fifth Friday night.

Of the Angels’ 14 position players, four--DiSarcina, Chili Davis (strained left hamstring), Jack Howell (strained left hamstring) and Jorge Fabregas (bruised bone in hand)--are virtually unavailable.

“Some guys are going to be playing nine innings every day for a while,” Manager Marcel Lachemann said.

Boskie went eight Friday night, giving up two earned runs and six hits after a 1-hour 36-minute rain delay. But McDowell was even better, giving up three hits, including home runs to Don Slaught in the fifth and Randy Velarde in the eighth, and striking out five. The Angels had only seven baserunners in the game, five off McDowell.

The difference? “We gave them five outs in the second inning,” Lachemann said.

The Angels could write off Cleveland’s first two runs on their 1996 tax form as a charitable contribution.

The bottom of the second began with Angel third baseman Tim Wallach whiffing on Albert Belle’s grounder for his fifth error in 12 games. Belle stole second, Jeromy Burnitz walked and Herbert Perry reached when Slaught couldn’t block Boskie’s strike-three pitch in the dirt.

Omar Vizquel then blooped a two-run single off the handle of his bat just beyond the reach of a diving DiSarcina in shallow left.

The Indians scored their next two runs the old-fashioned way--they earned them. Baerga reached on an infield single in the third, and with two outs, Thome lined a 1-1 Boskie fastball into the right-field bleachers for his 11th homer of the season and a 4-0 lead. In four games against the Angels this season, Thome is hitting .643 (9 for 14) with four homers and nine RBIs.

“I’d like to take my chances with that kind of effort every time out,” Boskie said. “But we didn’t have a lot of room for error and ran into a good pitcher.”