Angels Go Down Quietly to Royals

The thundershowers anticipated in the Kansas City area never materialized Tuesday night, which was too bad for the Angels, who would have preferred a rainout to the events that unfolded in Kauffman Stadium.

Royal right-hander Blake Stein threw one of his best games of the season, limiting the Angels to one run and three hits in eight innings to lead Kansas City to a 5-1 victory before a crowd of 12,873.

While the loss did not mathematically eliminate the Angels from playoff contention, it might have logistically knocked them out of the race. They are now 8 1/2 games behind Seattle in the American League West and six games behind Oakland for the wild-card spot with 12 games remaining.

It will take a miracle for the Angels, who have scored one run in their last two games, to reach the playoffs. And even if they could close the season with a 12-game win streak, the teams ahead of them--Seattle and Oakland in the West and Oakland, Cleveland, Boston and Toronto in the wild card--must lose most of their games for them to have any chance.

And considering Cleveland still has four games left against Boston and three games against Toronto, and Oakland has four more games against Seattle, the odds against the Angels reaching the playoffs are astronomical.

“It’s the ultimate frustration,” left fielder Darin Erstad said. “You battle so hard all year, you push and you push and you push . . . it seems like you’re facing Cy Young every night, and it just doesn’t click. We needed Stein to have an off night, and he didn’t. He had a great night.”

Stein (7-4) had excellent control all night and was able to ride his fastball up in the strike zone, which helped induce eight weak fly-ball outs. Stein struck out eight, walked four, and outside of Garret Anderson’s home run in the fourth, only one other Angel reached second base.

The Royals strung two singles, a walk and two more singles together to score three runs off Angel right-hander Ramon Ortiz (6-6) in the third inning, with Mike Sweeney, Joe Randa and Carlos Beltran contributing run-scoring hits.

Kansas City added an insurance run in the seventh, when Jorge Fabregas singled and later scored on Ortiz’s wild pitch, and in the eighth, when Jermaine Dye doubled off reliever Lou Pote and scored on Beltran’s single.

“We have to win at least 10 or 11 of our last 12 games,” catcher Matt Walbeck said. “You talk about taking one game at a time, but it’s getting late. Balls need to start dropping, we need to hit and pitch better, and the other teams have to lose. That makes it tough.”

While Walbeck was in Kansas City, his 2-year-old son, Luke, was undergoing eye surgery at the UCLA Medical Center. Luke has Strabismus, a condition in which the eyes appear to be looking in different directions.

Doctors rearranged his eye muscles in an outpatient procedure that has an 80% success rate.

“It’s kind of tough when you’re not with him,” Walbeck said. “But he’s going to be OK.”