Lackey Folds in Sections

It used to be a start-to-start thing, this maddening tendency for Angel pitcher John Lackey to look like a Cy Young Award candidate one game and a triple-A candidate the next. Now, the Angels don’t know what to expect from Lackey from one inning to the next.

The mistake-prone Lackey endured his third mediocre game in as many starts this season, giving up seven runs and 10 hits in 5 2/3 innings of Sunday’s 7-6 loss to the Oakland Athletics in front of 36,291 in McAfee Coliseum.

Three times, the Angel offense handed Lackey a lead, on Vladimir Guerrero’s two-run home run in the first inning, Chone Figgins’ run-scoring groundout in the second and Garret Anderson’s clutch three-run homer off Ricardo Rincon, the A’s left-handed relief specialist, in the sixth, which put the Angels ahead, 6-4.

Three times, Lackey fumbled the lead away.

The 6-foot-6 right-hander looked awful in the first two innings, giving up four runs and six hits, including Jason Kendall’s two-out, two-run double -- on a hanging curveball -- in the second that gave the A’s a 4-3 lead.

Then Lackey found his rhythm, retiring 11 of 12 batters, including strikeouts of No. 3 batter Eric Chavez and cleanup hitter Erubiel Durazo to end the fifth.

Then Lackey lost it in the sixth. Eric Byrnes doubled with one out, Mark Ellis singled for a run and No. 9 hitter Marco Scutaro, whose 10th-inning bunt beat the Angels Saturday, lined a hanging curve over the wall in left for a two-out, two-run homer and a 7-6 lead.

“Looking at the first 30 pitches or so, the middle 50 pitches and the end of the game, it was like three different guys,” Manager Mike Scioscia said of Lackey, who is 1-1 with an 8.22 earned-run average.

“At times last year, he had a problem finishing innings, and that caught up to him today. He got into a nice flow in the middle innings, when he put up zeros and his stuff came alive. Unfortunately, he made one mistake to Scutaro, and that was the game.”

Lackey opened the season with four no-hit innings in a 7-6 win over Texas on April 7 before collapsing during a four-run fifth in which he threw 48 pitches. On Tuesday, Lackey (1-1) needed reliever Brendan Donnelly to bail him out of a bases-loaded, none-out jam in the sixth to escape with a respectable line of five innings, three runs and five hits in the Angels’ 13-8 win over the Rangers.

The Angels almost got Lackey off the hook again Sunday, when pinch-hitter Juan Rivera walked and Figgins reached on a one-out infield single off A’s closer Octavio Dotel in the ninth.

But Rivera misjudged Darin Erstad’s soft liner just over the head of second baseman Ellis and was almost to third base when Ellis made an easy catch. Rivera was doubled off to end the game.

“It’s a situation where I just have to keep battling,” Lackey said. “Our guys are scoring runs, and they gave me three chances. I would have liked to have made one of them stick.”

Lackey says he is physically sound and his stuff is good. “I just made a couple of bad pitches in some big spots,” he said. But this has been a common theme for two seasons, Lackey’s inability to make the big pitch to avoid the big inning.

“John is a competitor, and at times he gets frustrated,” Scioscia said. “When he bends but doesn’t break, he’s terrific. Today, he couldn’t do that.”

The Angels suffered another loss when catcher Bengie Molina, who hoped his loss of about 25 pounds this winter would eliminate the leg injuries that hampered him last season, strained a muscle in his right thigh running the bases in the second inning and was removed from the game.

Scioscia said Molina would not play tonight and could be sidelined several days. There’s a chance he could go on the disabled list to make room for third baseman Dallas McPherson, who is expected to be called up from triple-A Salt Lake tonight.

“Knowing Bengie’s history with these things, it’s clear it might be more than a day or two,” Scioscia said. “We’ll see in time whether we have to make a move.”