Lackey’s bad first becomes good win

If there had been a life preserver in the Angels’ dugout, somebody would have thrown it to the mound in the first inning Saturday night. John Lackey could have used it.

The Angels’ ace was drowning in a sea of hits, baserunners and pitches -- 45 in all, a career high for pitches in an inning -- and not until Jerry Hairston lined out to center on a full count with the bases loaded did the 25-minute half-inning, in which Texas batted around and scored three runs, come to a merciful end.

A quality start, this wasn’t.

A quality start it was.

Lackey righted himself and completed six innings, giving up four runs --three earned -- seven hits, and striking out five, and the Angels used their rat-a-tat-tat attack to score in six of eight innings for a 9-5 victory over the Rangers in Angel Stadium.

“I definitely wasn’t working with a full tank after the first, but when the guys kept getting a run here, a run there, I tried to hang around long enough to run into a win,” said Lackey, who improved to 12-5 and is tied with Boston’s Josh Beckett and Cleveland’s C.C. Sabathia for the major league lead in wins. “The guys gave me a second chance. You don’t want to let the boys down twice.”

Reliever Justin Speier, making his first appearance since April 30, looked strong in his return from an intestinal infection, striking out the side -- Michael Young, Mark Teixeira and Sammy Sosa -- on 13 pitches in the seventh, and Scot Shields escaped a two-on, one-out jam in the eighth to preserve a three-run lead.

The Angels, who have gone eight games without a home run, a span of 76 innings dating to Mike Napoli’s solo shot in the eighth inning at Baltimore on July 1, racked up 13 hits, 10 of them singles, and broke the game open in the eighth on a two-out, two-run double by Gary Matthews Jr.

Reggie Willits, Vladimir Guerrero, Matthews, Garret Anderson and Maicer Izturis each had two hits, and Willits, Guerrero and Matthews each drove in two runs, as the Angels maintained a three-game lead over Seattle in the American League West.

Asked whether he could remember his team’s last home run, Manager Mike Scioscia said, “No, and I don’t keep track of them. All I know is we’re scoring runs like we need to. If the home runs come, great. If not, we have to score without them. That’s how we’re built.”

After his 45-pitch first, Lackey needed only 68 pitches to get through the next five innings, in which he gave up one run and four hits. Had he not struck out Ramon Vazquez and survived a 10-pitch battle with Hairston, Scioscia and pitching coach Mike Butcher wouldn’t have let him go much longer.

“Oh, yeah, Butch and I talked about some things,” Scioscia said, when asked whether Lackey was approaching a danger zone. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a guy have a 50-pitch inning; I guess it’s possible -- it almost happened tonight. If it wasn’t the first inning, sometimes it’s tough to catch your breath, but he did and maintained his stuff.”

Lackey gave up a leadoff double to Kenny Lofton and a run-scoring single to Young. After Teixeira’s groundout, Sosa singled, Frank Catalanotto was hit by a pitch, and Young scored on first baseman Casey Kotchman’s throwing error to the plate on Marlon Byrd’s grounder.

Gerald Laird walked with the bases loaded for a 3-0 lead, and Lackey looked toward the sky, as if hoping for divine intervention.

“I had to figure out some way to get someone out,” Lackey said. “I knew I’d been out there for a while. I had a pretty good sweat going.”

Lackey finally escaped, and five innings later he handed the ball and a 7-4 lead to Speier, who provided the second feel-good pitching story of the night with a dominant seventh.

“I think that was 2 1/2 months of frustration being vented in one outing,” Speier said. “I felt great. It was nice to get back out there and help the team win. I felt like a rookie the last few days, waiting to get back out there.”

--

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com