Innovative Angels Find Another Way to Lose

They didn’t lose any ground in their division Friday night, but the Angels continued to stink up the American League, inventing new ways to embarrass themselves in a 9-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Poor pitching and a lack of clutch hitting have plagued the Angels all season, but a Skydome crowd of 30,261 saw them add a few wrinkles--a key error that aided the Blue Jays’ five-run first inning and a baserunning gaffe that derailed a scoring threat in the sixth.

It was the Angels’ fifth consecutive loss, and though they remained 10 games behind Texas, there is a growing sense of exasperation in the clubhouse, a sinking feeling that this team is going absolutely nowhere.

“Sometimes I think the cops are going to come and arrest the whole team for loitering,” pitcher Chuck Finley said, “and we’d need some high-priced lawyers to get us out of that one.”

Finley, who entered Friday night’s game with 16 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings, ran into trouble in the first and his teammates couldn’t bail him out.

Toronto scored three runs and had men on first and second bases with two outs when Robert Perez hit a grounder to third baseman George Arias. But Arias’ throw to second for the force was low and skipped into right field, allowing a run to score.

Second baseman Randy Velarde was charged with the error, but Manager Marcel Lachemann said there was no way Velarde could have caught the ball. Alex Gonzalez then singled in a run, “and instead of three runs, they got five,” Lachemann said.

The Angels were trailing, 6-2, when Tim Salmon walked to open the sixth inning and Chili Davis singled, moving Salmon to third. Garret Anderson, who singled in his first two at-bats, swung at Blue Jay starter Pat Hentgen’s first pitch and popped to third.

Hentgen, who gave up nine hits in eight innings and improved to 13-6, then faked a move to third base and threw to first--you know, that pick-off play that never works. Well, this time it worked.

Davis, caught leaning off the bag, was thrown out in a rundown, and J.T. Snow popped to shortstop.

“We had first and third with no outs, and three pitches later [Hentgen] is out of the inning,” Lachemann said. “Murphy’s Law is pretty much in effect. Whatever can go wrong has gone wrong.”

Lachemann defended Davis, saying some players try to compensate for a lack of speed by getting a good jump. But Davis was far more accurate in his assessment: “It was B.S. baserunning,” he said. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

The inning was another in the land of lost opportunities for the Angels, who went one for 10 with runners in scoring position Friday night.

Finley (11-9) recovered from the first inning to blank the Blue Jays until the fifth, but solo home runs by Juan Samuel in the fifth and Ed Sprague in the seventh led to his departure.

Even closer Troy Percival, who hadn’t pitched since Sunday, could not escape unscathed. Throwing a tuneup inning in the eighth, he gave up two runs on Samuel’s double, his earned-run average (2.09) rising above 2.00 for the first time this season.

The Angels scored in the first on Jim Edmonds’ 18th home run, which snapped Hentgen’s 14-inning scoreless streak, and they scored an unearned run in the fourth on Snow’s RBI single.

But as it has so often, the Angel offense came up short. Starting pitching may be their primary problem, but the offense has also fallen well short of expectations.

Snow has only 25 extra-base hits in 107 games, four fewer than utility player Rex Hudler.

Anderson, the Angel left fielder, had 69 RBIs in 106 games last season but has only 43 RBIs in 105 games this season.

Though shortstop Gary DiSarcina has jumped from .209 to .267 in the past two months, he’s still far short of his .307 mark in 1995.

“There’s a lot of things,” Lachemann said, “that haven’t come together.”