Angels Are Fading Away

If the Angels are still in the playoff picture, they’re where the matting meets the frame, on the fringe, barely noticeable unless you pull your eyes away from the photograph.

A team that entered this month with postseason aspirations remained 0-for- September Tuesday night, the Angels’ 7-5 loss to the Detroit Tigers extending their losing streak to a season-high six games and burying them deeper in the division and wild-card standings.

A crowd of 20,322 in Comerica Park saw rookie right-hander Matt Wise get rocked for seven runs in 2 1/3 innings and Mo Vaughn strike out four times, as the Angels fell seven games behind Seattle in the American League West and 7 1/2 games behind wild card-leading Cleveland.

“There’s not a lot of areas to shake up,” Manager Mike Scioscia said, when asked what he could do to snap the Angels out of their funk. “If I didn’t see the effort, the heart, the passion for the game, you’d see some lockers turned over in there.

“But I tell you what. I see guys diving all over the field, living and dying with every pitch. In my mind, the solution is patience and more production from our starting pitching.”

Especially the pitching. During the losing streak, Angel starters Scott Schoeneweis, Kent Mercker, Ramon Ortiz, Scott Karl and Wise have given up 33 earned runs in 21 1/3 innings for a 13.92 earned-run average.

Two of those three (Wise and Ortiz) are rookies, and one (Schoeneweis) is completing his first full season as a big league starter. Only one, Mercker, has playoff experience.

“We knew coming in the pitching staff would take us as far as we’re going to go,” Vaughn said. “These guys are young, and this is the direction we decided to go. You can’t get down on these guys. Some days they’re going to be sharp, and five days later, they can’t do what they want to do. But we knew what we were getting into from the beginning.”

Wise beat Toronto, New York and Cleveland in three of his first four starts, but he gave up six runs on 12 hits in 4 1/3 innings of an 11-2 loss to Toronto last Wednesday and put the Angels in a hole Tuesday night, giving up Tony Clark’s two-run homer in the second and five runs in the third.

“He has a lot of innings, and this is the first time these young pitchers have been stretched into September, so fatigue could be a factor,” Scioscia said. “But do I think they’re jittery? Nervous? Absolutely not. These young pitchers are calm and cool and able to execute pitches.”

Juan Encarnacion (sacrifice fly) and Dean Palmer (single) drove in runs in the third for Detroit, and Billy McMillon, a late addition when Juan Gonzalez was scratched because of flu-like symptoms, greeted reliever Juan Alvarez with a two-run double. Deivi Cruz’s sacrifice fly made it 7-1.

As if the Angels didn’t have enough going against them, they found another foe Tuesday night--Comerica Park. Darin Erstad, who returned to the outfield for the first time since Aug. 19, drove a ball over 400 feet to the gap in right-center in the third inning, but it dropped for a double.

Spiezio’s triple traveled an estimated 420 feet and still didn’t clear Comerica’s expansive outfield.

What do you have to do to hit a ball out of this park?

“Uh, use a cannon?” Spiezio said. “Usually when you hit a ball like that, it’s way out, no question. But as soon as I hit it, I knew it might not go because I saw Ersty’s. Now I know what Juan [Gonzalez] complains about. It’s a long way out there.”

About as far away as the Angels are from the playoff picture.