A Lost Weekend for Angels

It’s hard to imagine the Angels compounding their misery on this dreadful trip, but as they showed in Sunday’s 4-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox before 23,710 in Fenway Park, you simply can’t underestimate this team’s capacity for calamity.

Their fourth consecutive loss and sixth in seven games featured the ejection of a player (Jack McDowell) who isn’t even on the active roster, a short and shoddy outing by one of their most effective starters (Ken Hill), the inability of one of their top left-handed hitters (Darin Erstad) to advance a runner from second with no outs and an awful afternoon by a first baseman (Mo Vaughn) who couldn’t have scripted a more horrible homecoming.

Vaughn, the former Red Sox slugger and community icon, struck out twice, ending a three-game series in which he went one for 11 with six strikeouts. He also played Trot Nixon’s sixth-inning grounder so nonchalantly that Nixon beat Vaughn’s flip to pitcher Scott Schoeneweis at the bag.

It was such a demoralizing and draining weekend that even Vaughn, who has a reputation as a guy who could always be found in front of his locker after a tough loss, elected not to address the media Sunday.

“He said he’s fried,” Angel spokesman Tim Mead said.

The rest of the Angels, who at 13-19 fell six games below .500 for the first time since Sept. 29, 1996, were simply skewered.

Though a faint pulse could be detected from their offense, which reached double figures in hits (10) for the first time in seven days, the Angels extended to 37 their string of innings in which they have not scored more than one run. They have gone 93 innings without scoring two or more.

The Angels, still without cleanup batter Tim Salmon (sprained left wrist) and No. 2 batter Randy Velarde (stiff lower back), have scored 11 runs in seven games, and it’s no wonder looking at Sunday’s lineup.

It included a catcher (Charlie O’Brien) who is hitting .091, a second baseman (Jeff Huson) who is batting .184, a right fielder (Orlando Palmeiro) who has one home run in his career, a journeyman shortstop (Dave Silvestri) who has a .206 average for his career and was recalled from triple-A on Saturday and a third baseman (Troy Glaus) who has two hits and 11 strikeouts in his last 27 at-bats.

You can just imagine the conversations between the opposing pitcher and his pitching coach as they prepare for the Angels.

Pitcher: “How should we pitch these guys?”

Coach: “Overhand.”

Manager Terry Collins said Saturday that “every guy we face is Cy Young,” and the latest to use the Angels as a springboard to greatness was Red Sox right-hander Mark Portugal (3-1), who gave up two runs on nine hits, struck out four and walked none in 7 2/3 innings.

“We’re throwing utility players out there every day and asking them to do a lot,” Salmon said. “It creates a situation where Mo is not getting good pitches to hit and neither is Garret [Anderson, cleanup batter]. We’re missing guys, and it’s starting to catch up with us, it’s starting to show. Guys are pressing, and that’s natural.”

Todd Greene’s second-inning double and Palmeiro’s run-scoring single gave the Angels a 1-0 advantage, their first lead in 28 innings. It lasted all of two pitches, when Nomar Garciaparra blasted Hill’s second pitch in the bottom of the second over the screen above the Green Monster in left for a home run.

Hill, who lost his rhythm and threw nine consecutive balls at one point in the second, made a huge mistake in the third, grooving a two-out, 0-2 pitch that Troy O’Leary smacked for an RBI single. Boston added two more runs in the fourth on Damon Buford’s RBI triple and Jose Offerman’s sacrifice fly.

Erstad tripled and scored on Silvestri’s double in the fifth, but Boston’s two-run lead seemed like a 12-run advantage the way the Angels are hitting. They managed a double and a single over the last four innings.

Next up is a three-game series beginning Tuesday in New York against Yankee pitchers Andy Pettitte, David Cone and Roger Clemens.

“You have to pick it up any time you go to New York,” Collins said, “or they’ll kill you.”

OK, maybe it can get worse.