Angels Need to Start to Make Things Happen

It would be foolish to conclude after 22 games that the Angels lack the same aggressiveness and selfless approach of last year, their signature attributes as they ended 42 years of angst with that parade down Main Street.

Although there have been breakdowns on offense and defense, what they have lacked more than anything is the type of consistent performance by their starting pitchers that would keep the rally monkey from working overtime -- things weren’t this tough at the zoo -- and, as Manager Mike Scioscia put it, “sets the tone.”

Said Scioscia: “Everybody talks about our style of play last year, but it all starts with the pitchers. It starts with the hitters knowing they’re going to be in the game and not always playing catch-up.”

Scioscia, of course, is confident his starters will respond.

One reason is that the injuries and ineffectiveness have left him with no real alternatives.

Another is that he saw how they performed last year when only the Oakland A’s among American League teams had a better earned-run average (3.68 to 3.69), and Jarrod Washburn won 18 games, Ramon Ortiz 15 and Kevin Appier 14 before pitching well enough in the postseason (when the starters had a 5.22 ERA) to let a rampaging offense do its work.

In a pregame meeting with his starters Thursday, prompted by their 6-10 record, 6.31 ERA, a yield of 23 homers in 112 2/3 innings and their failure to produce more than four quality starts (six innings of three runs or less), Scioscia said he “reinforced his confidence,” reminding them to get back to basics, to trusting their stuff.

“The only thing they have control over is their own pitches, and they were great at that last year,” he said.

“These are very accountable guys who know they can pitch better than they have, and they will.

“They have to.”

Have to, of course, or the Angels have no chance of duplicating their magical summer of 2002.

No chance really of even reversing their inconsistent start, as they were in the process of doing at this time a year ago when they won eight in a row to catapult back from the 6-14 start that has become something of a hallmark juncture.

Well, all things have to start with a first step, and maybe Ortiz helped provide it Thursday night when he was thrown in the path of the Bronx Bulldozer and survived, so to speak, getting the Angels into the sixth inning of a 6-2 victory that enabled the Angels to salvage the finale of a three-game series with the New York Yankees and was more reminiscent of October than anything Anaheim had produced in a 9-12 April.

Perhaps, too, it was more than that. “I think one or two good starts can get us clicking as a staff,” Washburn said. “A few good starts can turn us around as a team.

“I think a few of the guys have been going to the mound and putting pressure on themselves. I mean, it’s hard not to when everybody has been talking about how bad the starting pitching has been.”

Washburn faces the Boston Red Sox tonight with a 1-2 record, 4.33 ERA and the ongoing discomfort of a pitching shoulder injured in March.

“Mentally,” the 2002 ace said, “I’m prepared to deal with it. It’s not 100% and I can’t expect it to be considering I tore ligaments. There’s going to be pain, but I’ve conditioned myself to live with it, and I think I can be as effective as I was last year. I’m smarter, and my changeup is better.”

Well, Washburn may be smarter, but whether he really has a changeup that figures significantly in a repertoire that is basically high and hard remains to be seen.

This much is certain:

Washburn’s tenuous shoulder is only one of the uncertainties that make it impossible to compare 10-12 with last year’s 6-14 start, or as Darin Erstad said, “two totally different circumstances. You can’t compare, and I don’t.”

A year ago, the Angels had Scott Spiezio and Troy Glaus returning from the season-opening suspended list, Troy Percival returning from the disabled list, and Erstad returning from a concussion. They were getting well in more ways than one.

Now?

Well, there’s the uncertainty of Washburn’s shoulder, Glaus’ wrist, Erstad’s hand and hamstring and the elbow strain that has put Appier on the disabled list with Aaron Sele, meaning that two pitchers are one more than the Angels had on the DL at any time last year -- when only Sele went down.

In addition, there’s the concern over John Lackey’s troubled start, the question of whether Mickey Callaway can be considered a reliable starter, the loss of emergency starter Matt Wise for the year because of elbow surgery and the fact that last year’s promotions of Lackey, Callaway, Francisco Rodriguez, Brendan Donnelly and Scot Shields virtually stripped the system of pitchers prepared to produce at the big league level.

Shields is expected to leave the bullpen to take Appier’s start Saturday, and Sele, coming off rotator cuff surgery, could be rejoining the rotation next week, when Erstad might have sufficiently recovered from his hamstring problem to return to center field rather than “feeling helpless” on the bench.

“Everybody points to our starting pitching,” Erstad said, “but it’s not just one thing. We need to play better all-around. We just haven’t got it together yet, and we have to do it soon. I mean, it’s still early from a won-loss standpoint, but we don’t want to sit here and accept the fact that we haven’t been playing consistently good baseball. We have to focus on turning that around.”

It starts with pitching and it will take more starts of the type Ortiz provided against the Yankees and more depth, perhaps, than the Angels needed during a comparatively pain-free drive to the World Series.

There are expectations now that weren’t there before, although Erstad shook his head and said, “the expectations we have as players are far beyond what other people have. Our expectations were to win the World Series even before we did it, and that part hasn’t changed.”