End of Boston Batting Order Beats Angels : Baseball: Light-hitting Macfarlane and Alicea spark 6-4 Red Sox victory.

ANAHEIM —  The Boston Red Sox have a potent lineup featuring speed at the top (Willie McGee or Lee Tinsley), power and precision in the second spot (John Valentin), brute strength in the middle (Mo Vaughn, Jose Canseco) and solid, steady batters in the five and six holes (Tim Naehring, Mike Greenwell).

And at the bottom of the order the Red Sox have the formidable duo of . . . Mike Macfarlane and Luis Alicea? Maybe not to the rest of the American League, but they were to the Angels Monday night.

Macfarlane, a .228 hitter, had a triple, a double and scored two runs, and Alicea, a second baseman hitting .263 with minimal power, homered and scored both times he walked to lead the Red Sox to a 6-4 victory before an announced crowd of 23,943 in Anaheim Stadium.

The loss stopped the Angels’ two-game winning streak and reduced their lead in the AL West to 8 1/2 games over the streaking Texas Rangers.

The Red Sox have won 17 of 19 to open a 12 1/2-game lead in the AL East, Boston’s biggest cushion since 1946. And tonight, they’ll start three-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens and resurgent knuckleballer Tim Wakefield (14-2) will pitch Wednesday night.

Angel starter Brian Anderson (6-5) gave up only six hits in 6 1/3 innings Monday, but he made several critical mistakes--his two biggest were walking Alicea with a runner on third and no outs in the third inning and walking Alicea in the seventh with a runner on second and Alicea squaring to bunt throughout the at-bat.

“Walking the guy in the No. 9 hole twice, that’s just plain dumb,” said Anderson, who had a five-minute, post-game meeting with Manager Marcel Lachemann to discuss his shortcomings. “He’s going to give me an out and I walk him on four or five pitches that weren’t even close.

“Those are the little things that determine close ballgames, and this was a close game.”

Alicea is a little thing (5 feet 9, 177 pounds) who seems to be on a personal crusade against the Angels. The former St. Louis Cardinal infielder, obtained in a trade last December, is batting .478 (11 for 22) against the Angels this season, and three of his six home runs have come in Anaheim Stadium.

Alicea homered in Boston’s 12-1 victory May 27 and again in the Red Sox’s 4-3 victory over the Angels last Thursday. His bases-empty homer in the fifth inning Monday night gave Boston a 3-2 lead.

“There’s no explanation [for why he’s done so well against us], but obviously we haven’t made the right pitches at the right time,” Lachemann said. “He’s a good little player. He’s hit three home runs against us, and they’ve all hurt.”

So did the one hit by Canseco in the top of the sixth--a bases-empty blast to left that broke a 3-3 tie. The Red Sox added two more in the seventh to take a 6-3 lead.

Macfarlane doubled and Alicea walked to open the inning, and both advanced on McGee’s sacrifice bunt. Lachemann summoned right-hander Mike James to face Valentin, the shortstop who is batting .287 with 21 homers and 72 RBIs.

But Valentin bounced a grounder up the middle that nicked off James’ glove on its way to center field, scoring both runners.

The Angels threatened in the seventh when Greg Myers doubled and took third on Rex Hudler’s single, but Alicea and the Red Sox, who have the league’s worst fielding percentage (.979), turned Tony Phillips’ grounder into the second-base hole into a nifty, 4-6-3 double play.

Myers scored on the double play and Dave Gallagher followed with a walk, but reliever Eric Gunderson got Jim Edmonds to line softly to short, ending the inning.

Alicea, whose throwing error allowed Phillips to score in the third inning, also made a nice play to stop Garret Anderson’s eighth-inning grounder to the hole and throw him out, and Stan Belinda struck out two of three batters in the ninth for his 10th save.

“We don’t look at any game like we’re overmatched,” Boston Manager Kevin Kennedy said. “When you look at our lineup, our bench, our starting pitchers and our relievers, we have every reason to believe we can win every night.”

The Red Sox victory spoiled a fine evening for Phillips, who reached on an error and scored in the first, walked and scored in the third and hit his career-high 20th homer of the season to tie the score, 3-3, in the fifth.

McGee (ground-rule double) and Vaughn (groundout) each knocked in runs in the third to give the Red Sox a 2-1 lead, the Angels tied it in the bottom of the third, and Alicea and Phillips both homered in the fifth.