Moreno Looks Forward

With his team fighting to avoid a last-place finish in the American League West, Angel owner Arte Moreno on Friday pledged to provide payroll flexibility to improve the Angels during the off-season and called re-signing All-Star outfielder Garret Anderson a priority.

“It’s obvious to any armchair quarterback that we have some areas we need to improve upon,” Moreno said before the Kansas City Royals defeated the Angels, 5-0, at Edison Field. “I promised the fans a lot of things, and one of them was that we’re going to stay competitive.”

Moreno pledged that the Angels would be aggressive in a free-agent market expected to include prized shortstop Miguel Tejada and outfielder Vladimir Guerrero. The Angels also need a top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher and could go after Bartolo Colon, Kevin Millwood or Sidney Ponson.

“Obviously, there’s not an endless amount of money,” Moreno said, “but we want to sit down with the baseball people and analyze what we [need].... I think from a competitive situation, we get an opportunity to go out and sign one or two players that are really going to enhance our team.”

Moreno has already identified one need in Anderson, whose contract expires after the 2004 season. The left fielder, who has spent his entire 14-year professional career in the Angel organization, is on pace to set career highs in batting average, home runs and runs batted in.

“My No. 1 priority is to keep home-grown talent together,” Moreno said. “You don’t want to be ridiculous [in terms of salary], but I really would like to be in a situation where ... he’s an Angel.”

Moreno said there have been some positives during a season in which the Angels, who were still within reach of a wild-card spot at the All-Star break, went into a tailspin by losing 20 of 25 games to open the second half. The biggest positive has been fan support. The Angels drew 43,111 on Friday despite a 15 1/2-game deficit in the American League West and expect to surpass 3 million fans this season for the first time in franchise history.

“The business side has been a lot of fun and the baseball thing has ... you’ve got a whole team on the DL,” Moreno said.

“I’m having fun and I think a lot of the fans are having fun. There’s still a lot of excitement from a championship last year, and the people are still living on it. But eventually we have to turn the page and be competitive.”

The Angel lineup, which on Friday included only four players from the opening-day starting lineup, was neither competitive nor compelling.

Anderson committed his first error of the season in the second inning when he failed to scoop up Carlos Beltran’s bloop single to left, allowing Beltran to take second while the ball remained stuck in the grass. But Anderson, who had not committed an error in 151 games dating to last September, atoned for the mistake when he threw out Ken Harvey trying to stretch his single down the left-field line -- that drove in Beltran with the game’s first run -- into a double.

Anderson again threw out Harvey trying to stretch a single into a double on a similar play in the fourth, but the defensive gem couldn’t make up for a power outage in which the Angels were shut out for the 10th time this season.

Kansas City starter Brian Anderson, a former Anaheim first-round draft pick, limited the Angels to seven hits while recording his first shutout since August 1999, when he was a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Angels hit into three double plays and failed to advance a runner to third base.