Angel Bullpen Supplies Growing Sense of Relief

A Yankee Stadium crowd of 50,048, sensing something dramatic was about to happen, pumped up the volume to extreme decibels Sunday when Paul O’Neill stepped in to face Angel closer Shigetoshi Hasegawa with two out and two on in the bottom of the ninth inning and New York trailing by a run.

Four pitches later, the impossible-to-intimidate Hasegawa hit the mute button, retiring O’Neill on a fly ball to left field to save a 5-4 come-from-behind victory over the Yankees that moved the Angels to within five games of first-place Seattle in the American League West.

“Maybe you don’t know Japanese crazy people,” Hasegawa said, when asked how he remains so calm in such tense situations. “They have the trumpets and everything going all game, especially in the Tokyo Dome, and it’s even louder than this. I’ve pitched complete games there. Now, I pitch one or two innings, so it’s much easier to focus.”

Hasegawa’s save, his sixth of the season and third in three opportunities since replacing the injured Troy Percival, extended his string of consecutive innings without giving up an earned run to 30, dating to July 3. It also capped another strong performance by the Angel bullpen, which outperformed the vaunted Yankee bullpen in a comeback victory for the second time in three days.

Yankee starter David Cone blanked the Angels on two hits over six innings, but the Angels scored four runs in the seventh against Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson and Randy Choate and one in the eighth against Doc Gooden to erase a 3-0 deficit.

The Angel foursome of Mark Petkovsek, Mike Holtz, Al Levine and Hasegawa gave up only one run in three innings behind Angel starter Matt Wise, who gave up three runs and six hits in six innings to improve to 2-1.

Tim Salmon jump-started an Angel offense that had generated one run and seven hits in the previous 15 innings with a two-run homer in the seventh, and the Angels used some aggressive baserunning and well-placed run-scoring singles by Adam Kennedy and Kevin Stocker to take the lead.

Mo Vaughn followed Scott Spiezio’s eighth-inning walk with an RBI double to left-center, giving the Angels a 5-3 lead and an insurance run that proved huge when Glenallen Hill homered against Holtz in the bottom of the eighth.

“Facing Cone is like playing Wiffle ball,” Salmon said. “You feel he’s one step ahead of you because he has so many pitches from so many arm angles. He had it going good today. It was nice to see him come out of the game.”

Salmon’s statement bordered on the absurd. The Yankees have baseball’s most feared bullpen and some of the lowest earned-run averages in the major leagues. Nelson was at 2.17 entering the game, Stanton 2.98 and Mariano Rivera 3.15. Salmon was glad to face that bullpen with a three-run deficit in the seventh?

“They do have a very good bullpen,” Salmon said. “You don’t plan on these things happening too often. You see the ERAs those guys have, but they’re human too. They make mistakes.”

Those mistakes weren’t limited to pitches. After Salmon’s homer, Nelson and Choate did such a poor job holding runners that Troy Glaus and Kennedy stole second base without drawing throws from the catcher.

That put Glaus in scoring position when Kennedy slapped a game-tying single to left against Nelson, and Kennedy in scoring position for Stocker’s bloop RBI single to right against Choate, which gave the Angels a 4-3 lead.

“We stole some big bags, and those gave us a chance to win,” Angel Manager Mike Scioscia said. “You work hard to read pitchers’ moves and get good jumps, and they obviously did a good job.”

Glaus had simple instructions: Stay if Nelson slide-steps to the plate; steal if he goes to a higher leg kick. Nelson kicked on his second pitch to Bengie Molina, and Glaus was off.

Kennedy was going on first movement, which is risky against a left-hander. But Choate has a reputation of not holding runners well. The moment Choate lifted his front leg, Kennedy was running.

“The fact we beat a premier bullpen twice in their park shows the tenacity of this club,” Scioscia said.