Angels Pull Out 7-6 Victory but May Lose Salmon

Sure, his team had lost five of the last seven while batting a puny .233. And maybe Terry Collins couldn’t even remember the last time an Angel came through with a clutch hit. But Chuck Finley was pitching and Finley has been the panacea for all that ails the Angels so far this season.

It’s not likely the Angel manager put on happy face with his PJs Wednesday night, even after his team rallied from a four-run deficit to beat Baltimore, 7-6, in front of 22,739 at Edison Field.

There still might be tears on Collins’ pillow.

It had nothing to do with the fact that Finley’s 19 1/3-inning scoreless streak was snapped in the first inning, an inning during which he gave up more runs than he had in any game this season. And so what if he gave up 10 hits and five runs in 6 1/3 innings?

The really bad news came in the third inning when right fielder Tim Salmon, who hit his club-leading seventh home run in the first inning, had to leave the game because of a strained muscle in his left foot. Salmon, who has been silently suffering from the painful inflammation in the arch of his foot for two weeks, will undergo an MRI test today and will not travel with the team to Florida.

“If we’re going to win, we have to have Tim Salmon in the lineup,” Collins said. “If he’s down three, four, five days, that’s one thing. If we miss him for two to three weeks, we can’t replace him easily.”

The Angels probably managed to temporarily take Collins’ mind off the loss of Salmon--something the struggling Angels can ill afford for even a brief time right now--with a stirring come-from-behind victory.

With his team trailing, 5-4, Matt Walbeck led off the eighth with a single to center and, after Paco Martin sacrificed, Gary DiSarcina lined a shot to right. Baltimore right-fielder Joe Carter overran the ball, slipped when he tried to stop and DiSarcina ended up with a game-tying triple.

Oriole Manager Ray Miller brought in veteran left-hander Jesse Orosco, whom Darin Erstad greeted with a two-run shot into the right-field seats.

As it turned out, the Angels needed every run. Closer Troy Percival walked the first two batters he faced and gave up an RBI single to Harold Baines, a hard grounder to the hole that might have tied the score if DiSarcina had failed to make a diving stop. Percival got Lenny Webster to fly out and struck out Jeffrey Hammonds to earn his fourth save.

Before the game, Collins was saying how the whole team is in a good mood the day Finley is scheduled to pitch. “They figure Chuck’s going to hold the other guys down and they won’t need to score a bunch of runs, just a few. You just relax so much more.”

The first three innings proved rather stressful, however, as Salmon went out and the Orioles built a 5-1 lead.

With two out, Carter blooped a single to center that landed just in front of a charging Jim Edmonds, who chose not to attempt the kind of diving catch that helped him earn a Gold Glove last season.

Rafael Palmeiro then bounced a single to center and Cal Ripken grounded a two-run double over the third-base bag. No. 9 hitter Mike Bordick--a guy with a batting average in the .170s and three previous RBIs --hit a ball over the left-field fence in the second to end Finley’s string of 33 2/3 innings without yielding a homer. And the Orioles added two more in the third on a walk and run-scoring doubles by Webster and Hammonds.

Finley gave up back-to-back singles to Palmeiro and Ripken in the fifth, but then slipped into a mini-groove and retired the next seven batters in a row before he got back to the Orioles’ cleanup and No. 5 hitters. Palmeiro walked and Ripken sent a missile caroming off the wall in center for a double, bringing first Collins, and then reliever Rich Robertson, to the mound.

The Angels capitalized on the Orioles’ defensive lapse in the sixth. With one out and Garret Anderson on first, DiSarcina hit a grounder to shortstop Bordick, who would have had an easy double play but fumbled the ball trying to take it out of his glove.

Erstad followed with a single to center that cut Baltimore’s lead to 5-4.