Starters Labor, but Angel Bats Work Overtime

Angel starter Kent Bottenfield and Dodger starter Darren Dreifort staged their own local production of Eight Men Out Friday night. The way these two right-handers were pitching, it seemed both would retire about that many hitters--if they were lucky.

Dreifort labored through four gruesome innings, giving up seven runs on nine hits and throwing 96 pitches. Bottenfield was hardly sharper--his pitch count hit 94 after four unsightly innings, in which he gave up four runs on six hits.

But Bottenfield mustered enough strength to retire the Dodgers in the fifth, and the Angels continued to pound Dreifort’s successors for a 12-5 interleague victory before a sellout crowd of 43,619 in Edison Field, giving Bottenfield (4-5) his first victory since May 5.

Rookie second baseman Adam Kennedy, benched for the past two games, busted out of a seven-for-56 slump with three hits, including a two-run homer and an RBI single, to pace the Angels’ 18-hit attack, and he made a nice diving stop of Eric Karros’ grounder and threw to first with two on to end the seventh.

Garret Anderson added a home run, a double and a single, Troy Glaus had two doubles, a single and three runs batted in, and shortstop Benji Gil, who will be displaced by Kevin Stocker today, delivered a little forget-me-not card to Manager Mike Scioscia, with two doubles and several fine defensive plays.

The beneficiary of the offensive outburst was Bottenfield, whom the Angels fancy as their ace, which is not a complete stretch--he has been their most consistent and reliable starter, a veteran in a rotation of youngsters who has kept the Angels in all but two games he pitched.

But the cold fact is that the Angels, before Friday night, had won three of the 11 games Bottenfield pitched, hardly the kind of results worthy of a No. 1 starter. And he didn’t so much win his fourth game Friday night as he did survive it.

After giving up Karros’ homer in the second, Bottenfield gave up three hits in the third, escaping unscathed only because of an outstanding defensive play by Gil.

Bottenfield needed 30 pitches to get out of the fourth, an inning that featured Paul LoDuca’s three-run homer.

“I’m going through a little bit of a slump,” Bottenfield said. “I’m not real proud of the way I pitched tonight, but it was good enough for us to win, and I’ll always take that. It was a good job by the offense, and I pitched barely good enough. That’s all I cared about.”

Dreifort’s stuff was subpar as well, and the Angels teed off on him, scoring three runs in the first on five hits, including Tim Salmon’s RBI single and Glaus’ two-run single, and three in the third on Bengie Molina’s RBI single, which extended his hitting streak to 14, and Kennedy’s homer.

Kennedy also walked in the first, was hit by a pitch and scored in the fifth, hit an RBI single in the sixth and singled in the eighth, reaching base all five times.

“I had some good at-bats, I got deep in some counts, I was able to see a lot of pitches and get a good feeling up there,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy’s diving stop in the seventh wasn’t the only outstanding play for a defense that slipped to 13th out of 14 American League teams with a .977 fielding percentage this week. A superb Benji-to-Bengie relay prevented the Dodgers from scoring in the third.

Alex Cora doubled to lead off the inning, and Todd Hollandsworth grounded a single up the middle that Gil lunged to cut off. Cora never slowed around third, and Gil fired a strike to Molina, the Angel catcher who withstood a violent collision with Cora to record the out.

“Benji [Gil] did a lot of good things tonight,” Scioscia said. “He’s going to get playing time. We’re certainly not going to cast him aside.”