Angels Win the Fun Way

Manager Mike Scioscia wasn’t about to go the Shaquille O’Neal route and call himself the Big Impediment, but even he couldn’t ignore the correlation between his ejection Saturday and an offensive blitzkrieg that resulted in a 13-6 Angel blowout of the Boston Red Sox before a sellout crowd of 34,754 in Fenway Park.

When Scioscia was tossed by home-plate umpire Bill Hohn for arguing a third-strike call against Chone Figgins in the seventh inning, the Angels trailed the Red Sox, 5-2, and had a runner on second base.

Three batters later, the Angels had a 6-5 lead and were on their way to their first win at Fenway since May 17, 2003, ending a nine-game Fenway losing streak with a season-high 17 hits and scoring 11 runs off the Boston bullpen in the final three innings.

“I guess I got out of the way,” Scioscia said.

After bench coach Joe Maddon took over for Scioscia, Darin Erstad singled to score Adam Kennedy, who had doubled to lead off the seventh.

Steve Finley singled to right, and Garret Anderson blasted a three-run home run into the Red Sox bullpen in right field off left-hander Alan Embree to give the Angels a 6-5 lead and move Anderson past Tim Salmon to the top of the franchise’s all-time runs batted in list with 990.

Anderson also tripled in the first inning, singled in the third and capped a six-run rally in the ninth with a run-scoring single, giving him 44 RBIs on the season -- he’s tied for third in the American League -- and 991 RBIs in his 11-year career.

“The guy’s an RBI machine,” said Erstad, who had three singles and four RBIs in the final three innings alone. “He’s always been the rock of our lineup, a guy with the ability to get it done in big situations.”

Angel ace Bartolo Colon (7-3) provided six blue-collar innings, giving up five runs and 10 hits but striking out 11, including David Ortiz with the bases loaded to end the second inning and Ramon Vazquez and Kelly Shoppach with runners on first and third to end the third.

Reliever Brendan Donnelly rebounded from a shoddy three-run pasting Friday night with a three-up, three-down seventh, and Scot Shields escaped further damage after Kevin Millar’s leadoff homer in the eighth to preserve a 7-6 lead.

The Angels then broke out a six-pack of runs in the ninth, an inning that featured three walks -- notable for a team that ranks last in the league in walks -- and Orlando Cabrera’s RBI single, Erstad’s two-run single, Finley’s bloop two-run triple and Anderson’s RBI single.

“If you look at our production over the last 10 games or so, you can see it’s on the upswing,” Scioscia said. “We’re doing some nice things on the bases, hitting with runners in scoring position, and to do it against some left-handers is encouraging.”

An Angel offense that was silent for most of May is hitting .334 with nine home runs and 65 runs in the past eight games, an average of 8.1 runs a game. And they’ve done it without injured 2004 AL most valuable player Vladimir Guerrero.

“You guys analyze it more than we do,” Erstad said of the Angels’ offensive woes. “I just like the fight in this group. It may not be pretty, but we get it done.”

It wasn’t that way for most of May for an Angel offense that ranks 10th in the league in batting, 13th in on-base percentage and rarely scored more than three runs a game in May.

“There’s no sugar-coating it,” Scioscia said. “Outside of the last 10 days, we’ve grossly underachieved.”

Saturday they simply achieved, beginning with Figgins’ home run to lead off the game and ending with rallies in which they batted around in the seventh and ninth innings.

The key push came in the seventh, when Red Sox Manager Terry Francona summoned left-hander Embree to protect the 5-2 lead, and Kennedy, Erstad, Finley and Anderson -- all left-handed hitters -- came through with hits.

Anderson was one for 12 with three strikeouts against Embree before his homer, which came after Anderson fouled off several fastballs.

“I haven’t had a lot of success against Embree,” said Anderson, who has seven homers this season, “but he left a fastball over the plate, and I got good wood on it.”

The Angels still had to sweat out the eighth, but their ninth-inning outburst against Red Sox relievers Matt Mantei and John Halama assured them of their first win in Fenway in more than two years.

“It’s important to beat any team,” Kennedy said, “but when you have a streak like that going, you’d like to know you can win in any place.”