Starters Will Determine Their Stretch Position

OAKLAND —  Let’s not embellish.

Just because Jarrod Washburn pitched eight shutout innings on three days’ rest, no one is suggesting the Angels now try him on two days’ rest, or one.

Just because Ramon Ortiz has won five consecutive decisions, no one is calling for him to join Washburn in a Spahn and Sain rotation down the stretch.

And just because Kevin Appier struggled for the second consecutive start Thursday and John Lackey has lost some of his rookie groove and Mickey Callaway is unlikely to be trusted with another start unless it’s in a game that doesn’t matter next weekend, no one is saying the Angels have a major problem with their starting pitching.

It’s just that any problem seems more than minor now because the Angels lost a doubleheader of sorts Thursday and are looking at some hard realities.

The 5-3 setback to the Oakland A’s in which a laboring Appier threw 102 pitches in 5 1/3 innings and Brendan Donnelly threw a fastball he wished he hadn’t left the Angels one game behind the A’s in the American League West and gave Oakland the season series, 11-9.

That means the A’s are assured of the division title if they end up tied with the Angels after the next nine games, and it means the Angels will have to win the division outright if they are to avoid the ultimate test for a team with no postseason experience--a wild-card October in New York.

Of course, the Angels believe they have been playing playoff-caliber games for weeks now, especially in the compelling eight games that they split with the A’s in the last 11 days.

And although Manager Mike Scioscia wasn’t about to deviate from his philosophy, wasn’t about to look beyond tonight’s opener of a three-game series in Seattle and wasn’t about to label the loss to the A’s as a game the Angels had to win because of the tiebreaker, he could easily have been thinking of the playoff-weathered Yankees when he said the Angels will maintain the intensity and focus they first displayed in spring training.

“That intensity is the strength that will carry through the rest of the year and hopefully into the playoffs,” Scioscia said. “It’s been incredible. They’ve never backed down from a challenge, and the last month was probably the most challenging schedule of any club in baseball.”

Well, that may be the first time anyone has categorized the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Baltimore Orioles as challenging, but what Scioscia seemed to be saying is that the Angels didn’t let down while shadowing the A’s during their 20-game win streak.

He seemed to be saying that, even with Thursday’s loss and the three losses in four games here, a reversal of what happened in Anaheim, the Angels have won 17 of their last 21 and there’s no reason “to start standings or scoreboard watching now or doing anything differently than we have all year.”

The fact is, the Angels can eliminate the Mariners and wrap up the wild card by Saturday, and they still have time to win the division, as A’s General Manager Billy Beane acknowledged while also acknowledging what the Angels wouldn’t: that in the context of the tiebreaker, Thursday’s win represented a swing of two games and, thus, carried “a lot of importance.”

“We knew it and they knew it,” Beane said. “At least, I assume they knew it. Of course, they have the ability to jump back ahead of us just as we have the ability to extend the lead.

“That’s why you can’t get caught up in one game. By the end of next week it can change.”

Perhaps, but the Angels will need the quality pitching that enabled them to enter Thursday’s game with the American League’s second-best earned-run average.

As it sets up, Ortiz, Lackey and Washburn will pitch in Seattle. The Angels are off Monday, and Appier, Ortiz and Lackey are then scheduled to face the Rangers in Texas, although Lackey could be replaced by Washburn, who would be pitching again on three days’ rest as a prelude to entering the playoff opener on full rest.

The Angels finish at home with three games against the Mariners. The rotation will depend on the importance of those games. The one certainty is that Washburn, Appier and Ortiz will make up a three-man rotation for the five-game division series.

“Our starters have been so good for so long that it’s inevitable they hit a bump now and then,” Scioscia said. “I’m confident they’ll be fine.”

With Aaron Sele sidelined by a torn rotator cuff and unlikely to pitch again before the season ends, Washburn and Ortiz have sailed over the bump, but Appier--who will start Game 2 in the playoffs and is the one Angel with postseason experience aside from Sele--seems to have hit it squarely.

After pitching at least six innings in 13 consecutive starts, he has failed to finish the sixth in his last two, giving up 14 hits and 10 runs in 8 2/3 innings.

Appier was 3-0 for the New York Mets last September, and Scioscia said he didn’t think the 34-year-old right-hander was experiencing fatigue “as much as the fact that he has a complicated delivery that requires a lot of maintenance and he’s had a couple of starts now where he’s just not as crisp. He had to work hard for every out today, but he experienced the same thing earlier this season and battled through it.”

After seven hits and three walks and those 102 pitches, Appier handed a 3-3 tie to Donnelly in the sixth and was watching from the bench one out later when Donnelly, who has been so good in this late-career opportunity, yielded the decisive homer to Terrence Long.

With Donnelly having given up a tying homer to Oakland’s Eric Chavez in Anaheim last week, time will tell if this was a second and irreparable crack in his mirrors.

Time also will tell if Appier and the Angel rotation are headed anywhere but New York.