Angels’ Loss Is a Royal Pain

Starting pitching has carried the Angels to the brink of September, compensating for the team’s feeble offense for the better part of five months, but as the finish line nears, the rotation is beginning to cough and wheeze and its legs are beginning to wobble.

Ramon Ortiz was rocked for eight runs on nine hits in 61/3 innings Tuesday night as the Angels lost to the lowly Kansas City Royals, 10-4, before a season-low crowd of 11,479 in Kauffman Stadium.

That dropped the Angels seven games behind Oakland in the American League wild-card race with 30 games left and continued a disturbing trend for Angel starting pitchers.

They are 0-4 with an 8.14 earned-run average in the last eight games, giving up 38 runs in 42 innings. The Angels are 3-5 in those games.

“You come to expect great things from the pitchers and sometimes they can have bad outings,” said right fielder Tim Salmon, who is hitless in 18 at-bats. “I don’t get a sense they’re feeling [pennant-race] pressure. These guys are pretty loose. They’re going out and having fun.”

The heat of the playoff race didn’t affect Ortiz as much as the heat. Game-time temperature was 83 degrees, but the humidity made it feel closer to 100. His pregame bullpen workout seemed to zap Ortiz of his energy, and it showed; the right-hander gave up five runs on five hits in the first two innings, he had little command and his three pitches-fastball, slider and changeup-weren’t moving like they normally do.

“I went to the mound and had no power in my legs,” Ortiz (11-8) said. “It was very hot, very humid and just warming up in the bullpen made me tired. The heat took everything away from me.”

The results weren’t pretty: Ortiz gave up two home runs to second baseman Carlos Febles, a leadoff batter who had one homer in 175 at-bats this season, and the Royals, the league’s second-worst team with a 52-80 record, ended a six-game losing streak.

Kansas City jumped on Ortiz for four runs in the first, an inning that included Mike Sweeney’s sacrifice fly, Raul Ibanez’s run-scoring single, which snapped an 0-for-17 skid, and Mark Quinn’s two-run homer. That gave the Royals their first lead since the first inning of last Wednesday’s game against Chicago, a span of 39 innings.

Febles’ leadoff homer in the second made it 5-0 before Ortiz settled down, blanking the Royals on one hit through the sixth inning and giving the Angels a chance to come back.

Darin Erstad’s third-inning sacrifice fly made it 5-1 and Troy Glaus followed David Eckstein’s fifth-inning infield single with a two-run homer-his 34th-to make it 5-3.

Royal reliever Jeff Austin hit Eckstein with a pitch in the seventh and Eckstein scored on Erstad’s double to right to pull the Angels within 5-4.

But Kansas City pounded Ortiz and reliever Ben Weber for four more runs in the seventh, an inning highlighted by Febles’ two-run homer to left, to break the game open.

“Early in the game, everything was up,” Angel Manager Mike Scioscia said of Ortiz. “He couldn’t get his fastball down and his slider was flat.”

Just a week or two ago, several Angel starting pitchers talked about how they feed off each other’s good performances, how they take the mound hoping to outdo the previous day’s starter and stick with the other pitchers in the win column.

Could that be working in reverse now?

“That’s how the injury bug worked against us last year,” Scioscia said. “I hope that’s not the case with these rough starts. These guys are too good to let this bother them.”

Scioscia does not believe the Angels are succumbing to the pressure of the wild-card race.

“I think our guys are immune to that because of the methodical approach they take,” Scioscia said. “They go pitch by pitch. I don’t see [pressure] as a factor. I’m confident these guys are going to pitch well down the stretch and if they don’t, it won’t be because they were rattled in a pennant race.”

The Angel offense is another story. There is no reason to believe Angel batters can bash their way to the playoffs, because their track record has been so spotty.

“The pitching has carried us all year,” Erstad said. “We’ve got do a better job of scoring runs. It would definitely be nice to pick up our part of the game the rest of the way.”