Abbott and Angels Shown No Mercy

They popped the top on Skydome on Sunday, but the roof still managed to cave in on pitcher Jim Abbott and the Angels, who lost to the Toronto Blue Jays, 7-1.

A sun-drenched crowd of 30,253 saw Abbott shut out the Blue Jays for five innings. The left-hander looked like the Abbott of old, putting some zip on several fastballs, some snap on many breaking balls, and moving his pitches all over the strike zone.

Then came a horrific sixth inning, in which Abbott gave up three singles, a walk and a hit batter, a Gold Glove first baseman dropped a ball on a “routine” play, and a left fielder failed to catch a bloop both he and the manager said “should have been caught.”

Seven runs later, Abbott, who hasn’t won a game in more than three months, was well on his way to a major league-leading 14th loss.

“Jim pitched better than we played,” Manager Marcel Lachemann said of Abbott, who was charged with five earned runs on six hits in 5 1/3 innings. “His line was so unfair for the way he pitched.”

Abbott didn’t complain, though.

“The game doesn’t owe anyone anything--if you’re around long enough you learn that,” Abbott (1-14) said. “The team didn’t let me down. There are no fingers to be pointed, or blame to be cast. If I make some more quality pitches, we’re out of that inning.”

Abbott blanked the Blue Jays on three hits for five innings, and he was backed by two inning-ending double plays and center fielder Jim Edmonds’ fine running catch of Alex Gonzalez’s drive to the right-center field gap with a runner on second to end the second.

The Angels were ahead, 1-0, thanks to Rex Hudler’s double and Tim Salmon’s RBI single in the first, but catastrophe struck in the bottom of the sixth.

Otis Nixon opened with a single, but first baseman J.T. Snow failed to reach out far enough to field catcher Todd Greene’s throw on Domingo Cedeno’s sacrifice bunt, the ball skipping into shallow right field.

“I just dropped it,” Snow said. “I think it was such a routine play I took for granted that I was going to catch it.”

Juan Samuel walked to load the bases, and Joe Carter hit a sacrifice fly to left, tying the score, 1-1. Ed Sprague then leaned into a 2-2 pitch and was hit on the left hand.

Jacob Brumfield’s looping single to left scored two runs for a 3-1 lead, and Robert Perez dropped a soft single into shallow right to load the bases. Lachemann pulled Abbott for Jason Grimsley, who gave up a bloop hit to shallow left-center by Gonzalez.

But left fielder Garret Anderson couldn’t make the catch, and to compound matters, the ball bounced over his head and to the wall for a three-run triple and a 6-1 lead. Sandy Martinez capped the inning with a sacrifice fly.

“That ball has got to be caught,” Lachemann said of Gonzalez’s hit. “Garret did not get a good jump on it.”

Said Anderson: “He was right. It should have been caught.”

Edmonds questioned the relevance of the debate. “I don’t think anyone could have caught it,” he said. “I could have prevented it from going to the wall, but then we would have lost, 4-1, instead of, 7-1. We didn’t lose because of that play. We lost because we didn’t hit.”

Which brings us to Blue Jay left-hander Huck Flener. The former Cal State Fullerton standout scattered eight hits in 7 2/3 innings, mixing an occasional fastball with his changeups and sliders, but one particular pitch, which zipped by Edmonds’ head in the eighth, drew the ire of the Angels.

“Do we play these guys again?” Hudler asked. Told no, he said, “That’s too bad. I’d like to face that punk again. . . . He hit me [with a pitch] and I don’t even think I felt it. He couldn’t hurt my grandma. Then he put that pitch over Jim’s head with a six-run lead? That’s tired, man. We’ll remember that.”

Flener, who had never faced the Angels before, said he wasn’t throwing at Edmonds.

“He likes the ball over the plate and I was just coming inside,” he said. “That’s all it was. I don’t have any reason to throw at them. I don’t know why they’d think that.”

Edmonds wasn’t convinced.

“He may have been trying to come up and in,” Edmonds said, “but he’s got better control than that.”