Unable to Bring the Heat

It began early Saturday evening with a call from Jarrod Washburn to Ned Bergert, the Angel left-hander informing the athletic trainer that he was ill. Washburn was running a 102-degree fever, he was sweating profusely, his throat was killing him and he could barely get out of bed.

“He really looked as bad as you could look,” Manager Mike Scioscia said.

The Angels put John Lackey and Ervin Santana on alert for Game 4 against the Yankees on Sunday night and hoped Washburn, the scheduled starter, would feel better by Sunday morning. But Washburn was still running a temperature and feeling fatigued Sunday, so he was scratched in favor of Lackey, who started on three days’ rest.

“Jarrod didn’t fight it,” Scioscia said before the game. “I think he knows he can’t go out there and pitch, and for Wash not to pitch in this significant of a game, you know it has to be something serious. This just knocked all of the energy out of him.”

Washburn arrived at Yankee Stadium just in time for the first pitch, but Scioscia didn’t want him anywhere near his teammates.

“He’ll be quarantined one way or another,” Scioscia said. “We’ll keep him in a room here. If he flies with us, he’ll wear a surgical mask. If it’s bad enough, he might stay here an extra day in a hotel by the airport until he’s feeling better.”

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The Angels knew of Washburn’s illness before Bartolo Colon boarded a Saturday evening flight to Southern California to prepare for a possible Game 5 start, but they did not pull their ace back, even though he could have started Sunday on regular rest.

With Colon’s cranky lower back acting up after his Game 1 start, the Angels thought it was better to give the right-hander an extra day to prepare for a possible Game 5 -- and go with Lackey on short rest -- than to start Colon on Sunday.

“That was certainly part of the whole equation,” Scioscia said of Colon’s lower-back stiffness, a condition he has had since early September. “He’ll be fresher and [more] rested for Game 5 if we need to go that route. ... The extra time is important for him. It’s more important he get rest.”

After Saturday’s game was rained out, Scioscia asked Colon whether he could pitch Sunday, and Colon told him he didn’t feel comfortable doing that. Scioscia, though, is confident Colon will be ready for Game 5.

“He feels better now than he did before his last start,” Scioscia said.

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Kelvim Escobar looked good Friday night, giving up one run in two relief innings during the Angels’ 11-7 Game 3 victory. But he felt terrible.

Escobar started feeling stomach pains and flu-like symptoms while warming up in the bullpen, and he threw up several times before entering the game for the seventh inning.

He made it through two innings, giving up one hit, Derek Jeter’s home run. “But after the eighth inning, I thought I was going to pass out,” Escobar said.

Trainers helped revitalize Escobar with a bag of intravenous fluids and had him drink more liquids. Escobar said he was closer to full strength Sunday night.

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Both teams were less than thrilled with the television-driven decision to start Sunday’s game about 8 p.m. in New York -- prime time on the East Coast -- and then have the teams fly overnight to California for a decisive fifth game.

The Angels wanted today’s game to start at 7 p.m. in California, rather than 5:15, giving players a little more rest and giving fans in a metropolitan area of 18 million a chance to get to Angel Stadium -- or to a television set -- without needing to leave work early and fight the worst of rush-hour traffic.

To baseball’s television partners, though, nothing says October quite like the Yankees in prime time on the East Coast. Angel owner Arte Moreno chuckled when asked for his opinion on the game times.

“I probably haven’t had enough beers to tell you,” Moreno said. “I’ve been brought up to always think of the positive. The positive is, we’ve got the opportunity to win. I’m real anxious to get to Chicago and get some deep-dish pizza.”