Club Ends on Losing Streak

The 2001 Angel season ended with a thud Sunday, and not a moment too soon. A 6-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics in Edison Field was the Angels’ seventh consecutive loss, the 19th loss in 21 games, and it sent them 12 games under .500.

“Am I glad the season is over? What do you think?” said right fielder Tim Salmon, who suffered his worst season, batting .227 with 17 home runs and 49 runs batted in. “On a personal level, this is the toughest year I’ve ever had. You need to keep things in perspective. It’s a game. But it’s also my profession. People deal with more serious things, but there’s still pain.”

And relief. Most players, it seemed, couldn’t wait to bolt from the Angel clubhouse Sunday, eager to put the frustration and disappointment of their five-week collapse behind them.

The Angels were 69-62 and six games behind Oakland in the wild-card race after an emotional 7-6, 10-inning comeback victory over the Yankees on Aug. 26. They went 6-25 in the last 31 games and finished 27 games out of the playoff picture.

“This last month has been very difficult,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “I didn’t see us heading toward this. Our non-productivity sent us into a spiral. We played five months of solid baseball and one month of horrendous baseball.”

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While most players packed belongings into boxes to take home for the winter, Darin Erstad purged his locker Sunday. He didn’t want any reminders of an awful season in which he hit .258 with nine homers and 63 RBIs.

“Everything in my locker, every shirt, every bat, is gone,” Erstad said. “Everything that reminds me of this year, I threw out.”

Erstad sat out Sunday’s loss to the playoff-bound A’s, who scored four runs in the sixth inning to stretch a 2-1 lead to 6-1. Left-hander Barry Zito gave up one run on four hits in five innings to improve to 17-8, and Eric Chavez hit his 32nd home run and drove in his 114th run, breaking the Oakland record for homers and RBIs by a third baseman, set by Sal Bando in 1969. Bengie Molina and Garret Anderson each homered for the Angels.

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The Angels made it clear they would prefer to keep closer Troy Percival, who lashed out at the front office for its handling of summer contract negotiations and said Friday that he had no desire to stay with the club beyond 2002.

“The club took a hit, and it can be a distraction,” General Manager Bill Stoneman said. “But we don’t have a game [today]. The next game after [Sunday] is a long way off. Time has a way of changing things, and hopefully we can put this behind us.”