Late Angel Uprising Cause of Royal Pain

The Angels played around and through some dismal baseball, some of it theirs. It happens.

Finally, though, they made one more pitch than the Kansas City Royals did, found one more strike, one more neck of a bat, pulled an out or two out of thin air.

They scored four seventh-inning runs Saturday night and defeated the Royals, 9-8, before 30,869 at Edison Field. Troy Percival pitched a scoreless ninth, getting the final out, and his 12th save, with the potential tying run on base. It was the out the Royals could not get.

Mo Vaughn hit two home runs, giving him seven on the 11-game homestand, and drove in four runs. He has 15. The Angels hit three home runs.

It is not how they planned it. But the Angels have had difficulty getting innings out of their starting pitchers, due in part because of misguided pitches and in part because four starters are on the disabled list.

So, the Angels opened the bullpen door and had their relievers gang up, beginning with right-hander Al Levine. It wound through Mike Fyhrie and Mike Holtz and Eric Weaver and Shigetosi Hasegawa and Brett Hinchliffe and finally Percival, through good matchups and bad, strategies and, perhaps, whims.

It landed, eventually, at a tie in the seventh inning and the game well into both bullpens. Then shortstop Benji Gil overran a possible double-play grounder, and Hasegawa could not pitch them around the error, which made the resulting four runs unearned.

Mike Sweeney crushed a three-run double to center field and the Royals led, 8-5. Sweeney had four hits for the fifth time in his career and drove in four runs.

The Angels answered with four runs of their own, two on the Vaughn homer, one on Scott Spiezio’s single and another on Bengie Molina’s single. They led, 9-8.

Then came the outs. Hinchliffe, in his Angel debut, got three in the eighth, Percival three in the ninth. They were the outs that would not come for the Royals.

The Angels built a 5-4 lead on home runs by Spiezio and Vaughn and a two-out, two-run single by Molina.

Levine entered his first start since Oct. 2 and the second of his career on a loose pitch limit. The longest of his 14 relief outings this season is 3 2/3 innings, and the Angels preferred not to stress one of their few sound arms. Then he threw 30 pitches in the first inning and 24 in the second, and it appeared he would reach his limit before the third inning was finished.

The Royals scored a run in the first inning, when the first three batters reached base. Sweeney had a run-scoring single. With two runners on base, Levine retired Jermaine Dye, Joe Randa and Carlos Beltran, Dye and Beltran on strikeouts.

The took a 2-0 lead in the second. Mark Quinn had a leadoff single and scored on Johnny Damon’s sacrifice fly. Sweeney flied to right with two runners on to end the inning.

And while his pitch count grew quickly, Levine was not wild. The Royals fouled off handfuls of sinkers in the initial two innings. He threw scoreless third and fourth innings with a total of 19 pitches.

The Angels led by then, 3-2, and it was something of a surprise when Manager Mike Scioscia sent Levine out to pitch the fifth. Levine had thrown 73 pitches, about what Scioscia had hoped for. Eight pitches into the fifth, a run was in and Levine was gone.

When Fyhrie gave up the inherited runner to score on Quinn’s sacrifice fly, Levine’s line read: 4 1/3 innings, seven hits, four runs, all earned. Fifty of his 81 pitches, many of them sinkers, were strikes. Levine probably will start again Thursday or Saturday, assuming his arm rebounds.

Those four runs weren’t near enough for Royal starter Mac Suzuki, who wouldn’t get out of the fifth inning.

The Angels are on a pace for 250 home runs, which would be the club record by 53 homers. They pounded Suzuki for two home runs and five runs in 4 1/3 innings. Spiezio homered in the third inning and Benji Molina singled home two runs in the fourth.