Two Wrongs Make a Loss for Angels

The last 16 Angels made outs Sunday afternoon, when for days they had hit all the way into the showers, into the parking lot, into the night, for as long as it took to keep scoring runs, to keep themselves in games.

They batted .302 for two weeks. They hit 27 home runs in 12 games. So many, that out in the bleachers home run balls were treated less like souvenirs than minor annoyances. Another homer. Three more runs. Big deal. Throw a strike. Where’s the beach ball?

On a spring day for which Southern California was made, the Angels stopped hitting in mid-afternoon and therefore were losers by late afternoon. The Kansas City Royals won, 10-6, at Edison Field, where they hammered Angel starter Kent Bottenfield for the first 4 1/3 innings and held the Angels without a baserunner for the last 5 1/3.

From the moment of Mo Vaughn’s run-scoring single in the fourth inning to the moment the road-weary Royals streamed from their dugout to celebrate the end of a 12-game trip, the Angels didn’t have a hit, didn’t have a baserunner, didn’t really have much of a chance.

“They just kept hitting a little longer than us,” Angel center fielder Garret Anderson said.

When Anderson hit a grand slam, the record-setting sixth of the day for the homer-bloated major leagues, and Troy Glaus homered two pitches later in the third inning, the score was 5-5.

Bottenfield (3-5), however, could not find his fastball. The Royals scored nine runs against him in 4 1/3 innings, six of the runs on rallies that began with two out and none on. Carlos Beltran, Joe Randa and David McCarty homered against Bottenfield, who allowed 10 hits.

“A lot of runs were scored with two outs,” Bottenfield said afterward. “A lot of hits were made with two strikes. I just didn’t hit my spots.”

Across the clubhouse, Vaughn pushed back in a metal folding chair. He pondered a 6-6 homestand record, on which Angel starting pitchers were 1-5 with a 9.38 earned-run average. They averaged better than six runs a game, and still lost half of them.

Whatever, said Vaughn, who crossed his massive arms across his massive chest and sighed.

“It’s going to be tight all season,” he said of an American League West that seems bound for a four-way tie at .500. “As hard as you want to get on one of those eight-game winning streaks, you gotta hang in there day after day until it happens. You just gotta keep on going, taking it pitch by pitch. There’s no reason for us to look down. We’ve got some guys who will come back and help us. We have no choice but to hang on until they do.”

Vaughn hit eight home runs and drove in 18 runs during the homestand. His batting average is .318. He is handling the inside pitch as well as he has in two seasons as an Angel, and so pitchers are finding few sure outs in his swing. He had two hits and a walk Sunday after his three-hit, two-homer game Saturday.

Still, it is obvious that until the Angels find some consistent, quality starts from their pitching staff, Vaughn and the rest of the offense will be running up the down escalator, nightly. For weeks, the slightest decline in run production has meant almost sure defeat.

Vaughn shrugged.

“There ain’t no consolation in this game,” Vaughn said. “It’s black and white. There ain’t no damn excuses. If you gotta slug, you gotta slug. That’s just the way it is right now. There’s nowhere else to look, nowhere else to turn to.”

The club is well into its pitching depth, with the injuries to Tim Belcher, Ken Hill, Jason Dickson and Kent Mercker. Brian Cooper will come out of the minor leagues to make a start Tuesday, Jarrod Washburn came out of the minors to make two starts, and Al Levine came out of the bullpen to start Saturday.

“For us to come out of this homestand with our house in order--we’re just a couple games off the pace--is a tribute to the fight on this club,” Vaughn said. “We need better pitching. That will happen. In the meantime, we’ll keep battling back.”

The pitching, he said, will come.

“We all have a lot of confidence to a man with these guys,” he said. “You’re going to start seeing them pitch the way they can.”

Otherwise, the Angels will have to hit all the way to September.