Donnelly Drops Appeal for Competitive Reasons

With 14 games looming against American League West rivals Oakland and Texas, reliever Brendan Donnelly decided to drop his appeal of a four-game suspension stemming from an Aug. 16 brawl-filled game at Texas and begin serving his penalty Monday night.

“I had other opportunities to drop it, but we were playing good baseball, and I wanted to stay active as long as possible,” the right-hander said. “I was going to have to take it at some time, and I didn’t want to take it against division teams. There’s really no good time. This was the lesser of two evils.”

Donnelly, who has a 4-0 record and 4.21 earned-run average in 56 games and has allowed only one earned run in 9 1/3 innings of his last 10 appearances, will sit out the three-game series against the White Sox and the first game of a four-game series Thursday at Texas. He will be eligible to return Friday.

Donnelly and reliever Kevin Gregg received four-game suspensions for hitting batters in the eighth inning of a 9-3 loss to the Rangers after warnings were issued.

Texas starter Vicente Padilla had hit Vladimir Guerrero and Juan Rivera with pitches the night before.

Donnelly claimed he didn’t hit Freddy Guzman intentionally and prepared video evidence for an appeal hearing, but he knew his chances of getting the suspension reduced were slim.

Was he disappointed he didn’t get to state his case?

“No,” Donnelly said. “I’ve lost interest in it.”

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Dallas McPherson, who joined the Angels on Monday after a lengthy minor league rehabilitation stint that was interrupted by another lower-back injury, will meet with a specialist after the season to discuss surgical options for a herniated disk that has flared up several times in recent years, clouding his present and future in Anaheim.

“The question is, would surgery fix it, and if I don’t have surgery, is this going to happen every year?” said McPherson, who hit .250 in 56 games at triple-A Salt Lake with 17 home runs and 45 runs batted in.

“There are three or four different procedures” with recovery times ranging “from six weeks to a year. The doctor in Arizona isn’t recommending surgery and is steering me away from it. He thinks I can get by with the core strengthening program I’ve been doing.”

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Young Il Jung, the 17-year-old South Korean high school pitcher who signed with the Angels for $1 million in July, attended Monday night’s game in Angel Stadium.

The 6-foot-3, 190-pound right-hander, whose fastball has been clocked as high as 93 mph and who struck out 21 batters in a 10-inning game this season, will undergo a physical today and then travel to Arizona for instructional league.

The Angels outbid the Dodgers, New York Yankees, Seattle Mariners, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves for Jung, considered the top high school pitcher in South Korea.