Angels, Yanked Around Again, Really on Skids

Ultimately, Urbano Lugo may have been the lucky one.

Today, 24 Angels will be handed plane tickets. Lugo’s will read Edmonton, his new place of employment in the minor leagues after washing out in seven pitching appearances. The others are headed for Baltimore, then Toronto, then New York--although rock bottom may also become a stop along the way.

Amid the familiar surroundings of home, the Angels went 3-7 against teams from those cities, including Monday’s 6-3 loss to New York. That completed a four-game sweep by the Yankees, dropping the Angels to 21-23, the first time they have been two games under .500 since May 31 of last season.

They are also 5 1/2 games behind the Kansas City Royals in the American League West and are staring into the barrel of eight straight games in three of their least-favorite cities.

“We’re going to three places that were extremely tough for us, even when we had our best teams,” said the Angels’ Brian Downing.

These Angels, who will embark eastward without pitchers Kirk McCaskill, John Candelaria and, now, Donnie Moore--who will remain behind to undergo therapy on his aching rib cage--are in danger of falling out of the race in the AL West before Father’s Day.

Last year, the Angels spun their wheels for more than two months, but had only the inexperienced Texas Rangers to catch in the standings. Eventually, they did.

This season, it’s Kansas City, an old rival with an armada of pitching.

This worries Downing.

“We can’t afford to fall eight or nine games back of Kansas City,” Downing said. “We can’t scuffle along and hope to put together some massive winning streak. I don’t see them having a prolonged losing streak with their pitching.

“They have the starting pitching we had last year--dominating starting pitching. They are not the same team they were last year.”

Neither are the Angels, it was suggested to Downing.

“No (bleep),” he said. “It’s gonna be more difficult, but we knew that going into the season. We have a lot of talent, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into wins. Sometimes, it takes time to make things work.

“We haven’t been able to utilize our best weapon, which is speed, because we keep getting down early. We have to keep coming back.”

It happened again Monday. The Angels were down, 1-0, after starter Jack Lazorko’s third pitch of the game was turned into a home run to left by Yankee leadoff hitter Rickey Henderson. The Angels were down, 2-0, after Dan Pasqua led off the second inning with another home run.

And the Angels were down, 5-0, after the first five Yankees reached base in a ragged fifth inning.

By the time the Angels managed a run against a 44-year-old ex-Angel named Tommy John, it was the seventh inning and a Yankee sweep was just a handful of outs away.

John (4-1) held the Angels to five singles through six innings, and his fielding faltered before his pitching. When John gloved a chopper by Dick Schofield and threw the ball down the right-field line, he paved the Angels’ way to their only runs of the game.

“I could’ve used Plastic Man (at first base),” John said of his wild throw. “I forgot Schoey was running. I should’ve just picked it up, gone back to the mound and got a double play. Instead, I tried to throw it to the right-field ballboy.”

Schofield wound up on second base, from where he scored on a single by Bob Boone. Mark McLemore followed with a double, and both Boone and McLemore scored on an error by shortstop Wayne Tolleson.

That was it for the Angel offense. New York reliever Tim Stoddard came on to shut down the Angels through the final 2 innings, allowing one single the rest of the way. And one of ugliest home stands in recent Angel history had come to a close.

Included were losing streaks of three and four games, the unavailability of Candelaria because of his two drunk-driving situations and two rounds of pain-killing injections in Moore’s rib cage. After receiving four nerve-blocking shots last week, Moore will undergo the same treatment today and begin therapy at Anaheim Stadium. At best, Moore won’t rejoin the team until the weekend in Toronto.

“I’m sick and tired of answering questions about the DL (disabled list) and games we haven’t won,” said Angel Manager Gene Mauch. “So, we got to fix it.

“We can’t be floundering around, alibiing--’Poor us, with the injuries.’ Nobody cares why you’re not winning. It’s ‘Are you or aren’t you?’ ”

Right now, the Angels aren’t. Haven’t been for a while.

And now they leave home. Baltimore, where the Orioles are 108-68 against the Angels, awaits them. Then Toronto and New York, the top two teams in the AL East.

Downing, though, looks at the Angels’ 11-15 record in Anaheim and says: “We’ve got to get out of here.” For the Angels, things can’t get worse than this on the road.

Can they?

Angel Notes

To replace Urbano Lugo on the roster, the Angels recalled catcher Jack Fimple, the former Dodger, from Edmonton. Fimple, who was hitting .319 with 2 home runs and 11 RBIs with the Trappers, becomes the third non-roster player to join the Angels this season--following pitchers Bryan Harvey and Jack Lazorko. Thus, another Angel starter falls by the wayside. Lugo, supposedly the answer to last year’s season-long search for a fifth starter, instead worsened the situation. In seven appearances, five of them starts, Lugo was 0-2 with a 9.32 ERA. In 28 innings, he allowed 34 runs (29 earned), 42 hits, 18 walks and 8 home runs. In his last outing, 3 innings of long relief Sunday, Lugo gave up home runs to Joel Skinner and Dan Pasqua, two Yankees batting below .200. . . . For the second time in two starts with the Angels, Lazorko pitched into the ninth inning. Lazorko was replaced by Mike Cook after yielding a leadoff double to Skinner in the top of the ninth, finishing with six runs and six hits in eight-plus innings. “Lazorko gave us some quality innings,” said Manager Gene Mauch, who has scheduled Lazorko to start Saturday’s game in Toronto. Last week against the Blue Jays, Lazorko took a 4-2 lead into the ninth. “Wouldn’t you give him another chance against Toronto?” Mauch said. . . . A peculiar double play helped bail Lazorko out of the first inning. With one out, he walked Don Mattingly and Gary Ward and delivered a full-count pitch to Dave Winfield that was low and outside. Winfield thought he checked his swing on the pitch and started jogging to first. Mattingly thought so, too, and headed for third. But first-base umpire Rich Garcia ruled that Winfield had indeed swung at the ball--strike three--and Angel catcher Bob Boone whipped the ball to third baseman Doug DeCinces, who had the tag waiting for Mattingly. So instead of having one out and the bases loaded, the Yankees had three outs and Lazorko was out of the inning. . . . Yankee Manager Lou Piniella won four games but lost $1,300 during his stay in Anaheim. During Saturday night’s game, Piniella had the money stolen from his wallet, which was in his office at the time. Sunday, Piniella held a closed-door meeting with his players to discuss the incident, the third in a series of thefts occurring in the Yankee clubhouse during their West Coast trip. Earlier in the trip, Mattingly and Mike Pagliarulo had $400 and $150 stolen, respectively, from the team’s safe-guarded valuables box. “It’s a shame we’ve got a problem like this,” Pagliarulo told New York writers. “You hate to think someone around you is a thief. We don’t think it’s any of the players.”