Angels Mix Messages With Harsh Punishment

If you’re scoring at home, the winning pitcher Sunday was Manager Mike Scioscia, the save goes to General Manager Bill Stoneman and left fielder Jose Guillen took the loss in the riskiest game the Angels have played this season.

The Angels threw down a surprisingly harsh season-ending suspension on Guillen one day after he was visibly upset following his removal for a pinch-runner in the eighth inning Saturday.

Scioscia and Stoneman better hope for more results like Sunday’s 6-2 victory over the Oakland Athletics, or it could turn out the conduct detrimental to the team was their own disciplinary action.

Sitting him out for a day would have gotten the point across. Instead Guillen was tossed overboard for the final eight games of the regular season and also the postseason, which is tantalizingly within reach now that they’re only a game behind the American League West-leading A’s.

Will it be a distraction, or addition by subtraction?

In removing a man with 27 home runs and 104 RBIs (Guillen is second to Vladimir Guerrero for the team lead in both categories) the Angels put the company line above run production for the most critical stretch of the year.

“I think Bill wanted to be loud and clear with the message,” Scioscia said. “I think he was. Anything that’s going to get in the way of us winning a ballgame can’t be in place. I think that’s what Bill’s trying to say.”

But because of the odd and conflicting way the Angels went about this, the message wasn’t very direct. In fact, there was debate about whether it was even a message.

Stoneman said this was strictly a required disciplinary action for one player and wasn’t a signal to anyone else.

“I wouldn’t head for the message-sending thing,” he advised one reporter whose questions persisted along that line.

If this was supposed to be a message to the team, wouldn’t they want to, you know, tell the team?

Scioscia never addressed the clubhouse on the issue, leaving it up to everyone to discover it on his own.

Adam Riggs learned he would be starting in Guillen’s place during pregame stretching. Bengie Molina heard the news from Guerrero in the third inning. Garret Anderson didn’t find out until after the game.

It’s not fair to the players to have a teammate yanked out of the clubhouse in September and to set the media loose to hound them with questions before the players have a full explanation of the facts.

“Why they did it, I don’t know,” Garret Anderson said. “And I probably don’t really want to know, either.”

Guillen said he had an inkling something was up when hitting coach Mickey Hatcher told him he would take batting practice with a different group than he usually does. But he said he didn’t know he would not be in Sunday’s lineup until I told him as we walked from the dugout to the clubhouse about 90 minutes before game time.

We chatted, he tried to act nonchalant and said the manager gets to make the decisions, then the doors closed and Scioscia and Stoneman told him the real news.

He wasn’t available for comment after the suspension was handed down.

When asked about the behavior that precipitated Guillen’s departure, Darin Erstad said he wouldn’t discuss what happens in the clubhouse, an indication that perhaps there was something said after the game and not just Guillen’s visible tossing of his helmet and glove after his removal Saturday.

Stoneman and Scioscia made it clear that the suspension was an accumulation of attitude by Guillen throughout the season.

It’s also safe to say the Angels wouldn’t be here, their hearts still beating in the pennant race, without him. In May, when other players kept landing on the disabled list, Guillen batted .351 with eight home runs and 27 RBIs.

Apparently that doesn’t matter in September, especially when Guillen has a .241 average and only three RBIs for the month.

Oh, among the other messages sent out on this day of not-message-sending was that Guillen and the final year and $3.5 million on his contract are now on the trading block.

Scioscia and several players said Guillen could return and Stoneman was noncommittal, but how is Guillen supposed to play for this squad after he got the full, open-palm slap in the face?

Right now it’s all about the guys who are left behind. And they seemed to echo the message Stoneman said he didn’t send.

“You’ve got to respect your manager, you’ve got to respect your organization and the uniform you’re playing in,” said closer Troy Percival, who might have worn the Angel home uniform for the last time Sunday.

“There’s no way we’ll get to where we need to be if we’re not a team,” shortstop David Eckstein said. “The team is everything.”

And in a subtle way, the brass told the team it’s good enough to win without Guillen.

It worked out that way Sunday, when Riggs doubled in the go-ahead run in the second, defensive replacement Jeff DaVanon made a nice running grab in left in the top of the ninth, and the Angel hitters got back to taking pitches and making productive outs, including a suicide squeeze by Molina that scored Guerrero from third.

“Anything to help the team,” Molina said.

It’s the old Angel way, reinforced by their new, harsh way of doing business.