Angels Put on Edge

In one corner of a hushed Angel clubhouse, left fielder Garret Anderson spoke in matter-of-fact tones, nary a sense of urgency in his voice as he sized up his team’s dire predicament.

The Angels moved one loss away from elimination Saturday night, one loss away from becoming a footnote to the Chicago White Sox’s run to their first World Series since 1959, when they were manhandled in an 8-2 loss in Game 4 of the American League championship series at Angel Stadium.

“That’s baseball,” Anderson repeated several times, when asked about the dominance of a White Sox pitching staff that threw its third straight complete game Saturday, this one a two-run, six-hit gem by Freddy Garcia that gave the White Sox a 3-1 edge in the best-of-seven series. “We’ve lost three in a row before.”

In another corner of the Angel clubhouse, second baseman Adam Kennedy steamed, a quiet rage simmering just below the surface of his restrained voice.

There would be no shame in losing to the White Sox, a talented, balanced and well-managed group that led the league with 99 wins, but there would be no honor in going down the way the Angels are losing.

Early deficits. Feeble at-bats. Three-up, three-down innings. Getting completely out-pitched, out-hit, out-run, out-fielded, out-hustled. Fans bolting toward the exits in the eighth inning.

“We are absolutely not getting any rallies started or putting any pressure on the defense, and [the White Sox] are pretty much cruising through games,” Kennedy said. “The fact that their manager is letting their pitchers go into the ninth inning is a sign they’re dominating you.

“Each guy in this clubhouse is going to have to go home and figure something out and bring it to the park [today] because whatever we’re doing at the plate is absolutely not working.

“It’s really frustrating. The disappointing thing is not losing, it’s not putting any pressure on them, allowing them to throw three complete games in a row. They have one of the best bullpens in baseball, and they haven’t even had to use it.”

White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko provided another first-inning dagger Saturday night, a three-run home run off jittery rookie right-hander Ervin Santana, that came one pitch after Konerko nearly struck out on a check swing.

The Angels, who do their worst work on the uphill slope, were pretty much done.

They made a little noise in the second, when Bengie Molina’s run-scoring single pulled them within 3-1, but with runners on first and third, Steve Finley, distracted by home plate umpire Ron Kulpa’s failure to call interference when Finley’s bat hit catcher A.J. Pierzynski’s glove, couldn’t beat out a double-play grounder to second.

A rare error by Angel shortstop Orlando Cabrera enabled the White Sox to score an unearned run on Carl Everett’s single in the third. Pierzynski’s solo homer in the fourth made it 5-1, and after Casey Kotchman’s RBI double pulled the Angels within 5-2 in the fourth, Everett added another RBI single in the fifth to make it 6-2. Joe Crede added a two-run single off Angel mop-up man Esteban Yan in the eighth.

Angel bats were reduced to kindling once again -- they managed six hits Saturday night and are now batting .177 (22 for 124) with eight runs, two walks, 20 strikeouts and a .197 on-base percentage in four series games.

Chone Figgins, whose job as leadoff batter is to set the table, hasn’t even broken out the silverware yet; he was hitless in four at-bats with two strikeouts Saturday, he’s one for 14 in the series and .four for 35 with 11 strikeouts in nine playoff games.

“They’re not putting the ball in hitting zones,” said Figgins, who hit .290 with a .352 on-base percentage, 113 runs and a major league-leading 62 stolen bases during the regular season.

Right fielder Vladimir Guerrero, the 2004 A.L. most valuable player, can barely get a ball out of the infield -- he grounded out four times Saturday and is one for 16 in the series and seven for 34 with one RBI in the playoffs.

Never known for his patience at the plate, Guerrero, who has been bothered periodically by a sore left shoulder, saw nine pitches Saturday and has seen all of 36 pitches in this series.

“They’re pitching me the same way they did before, with fastballs and changeups. I’m just not swinging good, that’s it,” Guerrero said through an interpreter. “My swing is the same. My shoulder is not 100%, but it’s fine. I’ve been playing every day. I feel the same.”

Garcia -- who joined Mark Buehrle and Jon Garland to become the first three pitchers to throw consecutive complete games in a playoff series since Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack and Jerry Koosman accomplished the feat for the New York Mets against the Cincinnati Reds -- set down the Angels in order in five of nine innings.

“This is the strangest year I’ve ever seen from an offensive standpoint,” Angel first baseman Darin Erstad said. “We can be really good or really bad. But one thing I know is we can turn it around in a hurry. We’ve just got to keep grinding it out. We’re not going to lay down and give them this thing.”

That was essentially the message from Manager Mike Scioscia to his players in a brief postgame team meeting.

“It’s been a long year, we have four days, it’s going to be here in a blink of an eye,” Scioscia said, when asked what he told the Angels. “We need a three-game win streak to reach our goal. That’s all we need.”

What the Angels don’t need, Scioscia said, is any kind of gut check.

“These guys, to get to this point, have spilled blood and body parts all over the field,” Scioscia said. “They’ve battled as hard as any team we’ve seen to get to this point. We just need three wins to get to the World Series.”