Angels Truly Bedeviled, 8-1

One loss could be easily quantified Saturday night--the Tampa Bay Devil Rays hammered the Angels, 8-1, before 37,878 at Edison Field, knocking Angel starter Jason Dickson silly and riding the strong left arm of Wilson Alvarez, who gave up one run and six hits and struck out nine in seven innings.

The other Angel loss remained hazy. Center fielder Jim Edmonds left the game in the fourth inning because of a sprained right wrist, an injury he suffered when his glove hand got caught between his chest and the ground as he tried to make a diving catch of Fred McGriff’s third-inning liner.

Initial X-rays were negative, but Manager Terry Collins said he won’t know until today how long Edmonds will be sidelined, the uncertainty over his future adding injury to several insults, such as the Angels’ botched fourth-inning rundown, another 0-for-4 evening by Cecil Fielder, who has four hits in his last 43 at-bats, and their fifth loss in seven games.

“We’ve got big problems right now, no doubt about it,” Collins said. “It’s frustrating because I know we’re better than how we’re playing. But every mistake we make is capitalized on.

“We screw up a rundown and they score two runs. We make a bad pitch and it’s hit in the gap. We just can’t get anything going. I wish I could point my finger at one guy, but there’s 25 of us, and we all take responsibility.”

There was one hint of good news: At least Edmonds didn’t re-injure the right thumb he hurt in 1996, when he missed more than a month of that season because of a sprained medial collateral ligament.

“Obviously he’s going to need a couple days off,” Collins said, “but we won’t find out until [today] whether he might have to [go on the disabled list].”

If Edmonds has to go on the disabled list for the eighth time in his professional career, the Angels will have a plethora of options to replace him. They could recall outfielder Orlando Palmeiro from triple-A Vancouver, or they could move first baseman Darin Erstad to center, Fielder to first and plug the designated hitter spot with bench players.

Or, they could go in a more radical direction--move Erstad to center, third baseman Dave Hollins to first and recall hot-hitting third baseman Troy Glaus from double-A Midland, where he is batting .365 with 10 home runs and 25 runs batted in in his first 15 games.

Another perplexing problem for Collins: What to do about Dickson?

The young right-hander gave up six earned runs in 5 1/3 innings of his last start April 11 at Cleveland, but he felt he threw the ball better, saying he made “a 180-degree turn” from his first start, a 4 1/3-inning, six-run disaster against Cleveland on April 5.

If that’s the case, Dickson came full circle Saturday night. He looked sharp in the first, retiring the side in order, but began leaving pitches up in the second, during which McGriff, Paul Sorrento and Bobby Smith opened with singles to load the bases.

Dickson struck out John Flaherty but walked Kevin Stocker to force in a run. Tim Salmon saved a run with a sliding catch of Miguel Cairo’s sinking liner, and Quinton McCracken flied out to end the inning.

But more trouble awaited in the third, when McGriff singled, Sorrento doubled and Smith singled both of them home for a 3-0 lead; and the fourth, when Flaherty, Stocker and McCracken singled to make it 4-0 and Dave Martinez greeted reliever Rich Robertson with a sacrifice fly to make it 5-0.

Dickson’s gruesome line--3 1/3 innings pitched, nine hits, five earned runs--left him with an 0-3 record and 11.77 earned-run average.

“I’m a little concerned because he lives and dies with command, and any time the ball is over the plate, they find a hole,” Collins said. “Right now, nothing is going right for him, and that starts playing on your mind.”

The Angels broke Alvarez’s shutout in the eighth when Carlos Garcia singled, reached second on an error and scored on Erstad’s RBI double, which extended Erstad’s string of consecutive games with an extra-base hit to nine, one shy of the American League record of 11, set by Jesse Barfield.

Erstad also extended his hitting streak to 15 with a single in the first.