Cabrera, Angels Sneak Through

Mike Scioscia didn’t need a hook when he went to the mound to take the ball from John Lackey with two out in the sixth inning Sunday. He needed a crowbar.

The moment the Angels manager popped out of the dugout, Lackey fired the ball into his glove in disgust and rolled his eyes. The right-hander grudgingly gave the ball to the manager, who passed it to reliever Scot Shields, who turned it over to closer Francisco Rodriguez.

After the bullpen closed out a 4-0 victory over the Dodgers on a sweltering afternoon in Angel Stadium, a win that featured a steal of home by Orlando Cabrera and a home run by Vladimir Guerrero, and that pulled the Angels to within five games of first-place Oakland in the American League West, cooler heads prevailed.

“I wasn’t ready to leave yet,” said Lackey, who gave up four hits, had a career-high 10 strikeouts and walked one to improve to 6-5. “I probably would have been done after the seventh, regardless, but I just wanted to finish the inning myself. I thought I could get one more guy out. I’ve played football in this kind of weather. I’m all right.”

It’s that kind of stubbornness and competitiveness, Scioscia said, that makes Lackey so good at times, and Sunday, the big Texan was at his best, throwing his curveball for strikes on both corners and burying it in the dirt for a number of his strikeouts.

Only two Dodgers reached second base against Lackey, whose 6 2/3 -inning, 108-pitch effort helped the Angels win their second game in a row and build momentum heading into a crucial seven-game trip to Seattle and Oakland.

“These were a couple of big wins to get us going in the right direction,” Lackey said. “This is a big trip. The best way to gain ground is to beat the guys you’re chasing.”

Scioscia refused to put any special emphasis on the trip, saying, “We just need to play aggressively and with great energy, like we did the last two days.”

No one embodied that approach better than Cabrera, who extended his consecutive on-base streak to 59 games, the longest since 1960, with a third-inning double, took third on right fielder J.D. Drew’s error and then did something no Angels player had done in nine years.

Noticing the long pause in Chad Billingsley’s delivery after the Dodgers rookie begins his motion, Cabrera, with a 1-and-0 count on Guerrero, took off for home the moment Billingsley brought his left foot off the rubber.

Cabrera got such a good jump that Billingsley stopped his delivery just as Cabrera was about to slide home. A balk was called, but because a stolen base supersedes a balk in that situation, Cabrera was awarded the Angels’ first straight steal of home since Tony Phillips accomplished the feat at Seattle on June 28, 1997.

“That was about as clean as it gets -- that was something special,” Scioscia said. “O.C. is taking a chance with a guy who has the most bat speed in baseball in the box, but Vlad sensed it and got out of the way.”

In fact, Guerrero had a very good idea of Cabrera’s intentions.

“After the first pitch, Orlando told me he was going to take a chance, so please get out of the way,” Guerrero said through an interpreter. “I glanced at Orlando. He said a word or two in Spanish.”

Wasn’t Guerrero worried about Dodgers third baseman Cesar Izturis, who speaks Spanish, picking up on the play?

“It was loud, so I don’t think he heard him,” Guerrero said. “Orlando’s hand gesture was enough. Cesar didn’t pick it up.”

Neither did Billingsley nor just about anyone else in the stadium.

“That was awesome, one of the most heads-up plays I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” said Darin Erstad, an Angels player since 1996. “He caught everyone off guard.”

Cabrera’s dash gave the Angels a 2-0 lead. Guerrero’s sixth-inning, opposite-field home run, his 17th this season and first since June 15, made it 3-0, and the Angels added another run on shortstop Rafael Furcal’s throwing error, the sixth unearned run the Dodgers had given up in two weekend games.

“Anything bad you can think of just about happened,” Manager Grady Little said after the Dodgers lost for the fifth time in six games. “We misplayed some balls at crucial times and didn’t put together enough quality at-bats. It was a bad two days down here.”