Angels Able to Close Gap Against A’s

Maybe the Seattle Mariners are still too far removed-- geographically and in the American League West standings--to hear the thunder being produced by the Angels’ offense (and maybe apologies are owed to Manager Mike Scioscia for suggesting the confidence he has shown in his batters over the last two years was strictly spin control), but the echoes have to be reverberating in the Oakland A’s ears.

The Angels have rocked past the A’s into second place in the West, and while it still has to be shown that the 41-game disparity separating them from the Mariners last season was a one-year illusion created by Seattle’s 116 wins, they seem to have removed the significance from the 27 games they trailed Oakland in 2001.

The A’s won 102 games last year, but their vaunted starting pitchers have lost luster, and it’s being suggested in the Bay Area that the A’s have lost their trademark swagger without Jason Giambi. The A’s lost four consecutive games and seven of their last nine through Saturday, falling eight games behind the Mariners, and General Manager Billy Beane said, “we don’t want to overreact, but we don’t want to underreact either. We have to look in the mirror.”

The only Giambi reflection to be seen is that of Jeremy’s, but Beane--in reference to Jason--said the A’s should be finding all the leadership they need on the mound.

“If you’re getting great starting pitching, it’s the best leadership you can have,” he said.

Oakland starters led the American League in earned-run average and were second in wins last year. The Big Three of Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson and Barry Zito were a combined 56-25. Now they are 7-8, and A’s starters overall were 2-7 with an earned-run average of almost nine in a 10-game span through Friday.

Some of the magic evaporated when Mulder, who was 21-8, was lost early with a forearm strain. Mulder made his first start since April 11 on Friday night and gave up eight hits and six runs in 41/3 innings of a 6-2 loss to Toronto.

Mulder said his arm felt fine but “whether [the concern] is still in my head or not, I’m not sure.”

There is overall concern among the A’s.

“Are we going to roll over and give up, or are we going to continue to work at it to get better? It’s a gut check,” outfielder Terrence Long told the Oakland Tribune.

Meantime, compounding the rudderless impression, Jason Giambi has begun to assume more of his familiar leadership role in New York.

“You see his comfort just walking around and watching him take on more leadership, walking to the mound and talking to pitchers,” Manager Joe Torre said. “I think they appreciate it.”

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John Franco is 41 and probably headed for retirement. The New York Met closer until the arrival of Armando Benitez, Franco faces elbow reconstruction and will likely opt to end his pitching career with 422 saves, second to Lee Smith’s 455.

If the Brooklyn-born Franco has become synonymous with the Mets during 13 years in New York, it’s generally forgotten that he started his career with the Dodgers and might have filled the Steve Howe gap and more except he was traded to Cincinnati for infielder Rafael Landestoy in 1983.

Dusty Baker, the San Francisco Giant manager who was then with the Dodgers, paid tribute to Franco the other day, calling the left-hander a fighter who “was a little rookie coming up with us in L.A. The Dodgers said he was too short, and 20 years later he’s still pitching.”

He’s not the only pitcher to have his size considered suspect by earlier Dodger managements. There was a little right-hander named Pedro Martinez, traded about 10 years after Franco and still pitching, having won three Cy Young awards.

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Disgusted by the number of pitches directed at Barry Bonds’ head (the latest Thursday from the Mets’ Pedro Astacio) and calling for immediate ejections rather than warnings, Baker said, “It’s kind of bewildering to me because Barry’s not clowning, not styling, he’s just playing. You just start thinking like it’s the old school, that there’s a bounty on him.”

In the old school, it was an eye for an eye and the game went on, but then old-school graduates would have laughed at two recent developments.

* St. Louis Cardinal pitching coach Dave Duncan accused the Chicago Cub base coaches of relaying pitch locations to Sammy Sosa, depending on where the Cardinal catchers were setting up (“ ... it would be in their best interest to stop doing it,” Duncan said), angering Sosa and Manager Don Baylor, who called Duncan a liar and said he was paranoid.

This much is sure: Duncan and Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa, two exponents of country hardball, know well that in both the old and new schools, stealing signs and locations was and is a regularly practiced art--frequently with imaginative methods.

* Then there was the Colorado Rockies revealing they have been storing baseballs in a humidor-type enclosure to keep leather from drying and shrinking, which would make the balls travel farther. Skeptics said the Rockies were going to any length to restrict offense at Coors Field, but an appropriate humidor doesn’t compare to old-school charges of balls being frozen to reduce scoring, a frequent accusation lodged against the low-scoring, Go-Go White Sox in old Comiskey Park.

Sandy Alderson, baseball’s executive vice president of operations, launched an immediate investigation into the Coors humidor and concluded the Rockies are trying to preserve specifications, not alter them. He said baseball management has discussed instituting an industry-wide policy, but “ ... we didn’t want to get into the business of creating a chain of criminal custody ... [and] having to police all this.”