Finley Works With What He Has

Angel pitcher Chuck Finley’s struggles didn’t really end Sunday. Nor did they continue.

Finley, tagged for 19 earned runs in 30 2/3 innings (5.58 ERA) in his previous five starts, was not particularly sharp in a 5-4 loss to the Oakland A’s, giving up four runs on eight hits in seven-plus innings.

But the left-hander did strike out seven, including Rickey Henderson looking in the third and fifth innings, and walked only two. He also used a nifty off-speed pitch to strike out Mike Macfarlane looking to end the sixth with runners on first and second. There were two problem pitches: a fastball that Finley grooved to Mike Blowers, who homered to right-center in the second, and an eighth-inning forkball that was about as sharp as a butter knife, a hanging pitch that Kevin Mitchell belted into the right-center field seats for a game-tying homer.

“Chuck didn’t have his best stuff,” Angel catcher Matt Walbeck said. “He wasn’t throwing his forkball for strikes, but he still made enough pitches to keep us in the game.

“Chuck does that over and over again. When he doesn’t have his good stuff, he finds a way to compete, and when he does have his good stuff, it’s lights out.”

Someone hit the dimmer switch this past week. The Angels lost five straight for the first time this season, including three to the A’s, a team they had previously manhandled, winning 14 of their last 15 games against Oakland before this series.

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The Angels are 2-7 since they won three of four games from the Dodgers June 22-25, and as much as Manager Terry Collins tried to downplay the significance of beating their Southern California rivals at the time, he thinks there might be a correlation between that series and their subsequent struggles.

“We had a lot of emotion in that Dodger series, and we might have used a lot of that up,” Collins said. “The break couldn’t have come at a better time. . . . They need to play the second half with more intensity than they’ve played with in their entire lives.”

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Angel left-hander Jarrod Washburn, who left Saturday night’s game after five innings because of tightness in his forearm, played catch Sunday and said he felt fine. “My arm felt like new,” he said. “It was like I didn’t even pitch [Saturday]. There was no pain at all.” . . . Mitchell’s eighth-inning homer Sunday ended a 122-at-bat homerless streak. Mitchell’s previous home run came against the Angels in Anaheim on April 11, 1997 as a member of the Cleveland Indians.