Angels Gladly Heed the Call

Scott Schoeneweis deviated from his usual script Friday night, and the New York Yankees would argue the Angel left-hander had an influential co-author in home plate umpire Laz Diaz.

The Angels didn’t really care how the story was written. All they know is it had a happy ending, an 8-3 victory over the Yankees before a near-capacity crowd of 43,169 at Edison Field that pulled the Angels to within two games of Oakland in the wild-card hunt.

Schoeneweis is a sinker-ball pitcher who relies heavily on ground-ball outs, but he struck out a career-high nine Friday night while limiting the Yankees to three runs--two earned--on nine hits in 6 2/3 innings.

To put that in perspective: Schoeneweis had struck out five or more batters only twice in 17 previous starts. In his last five starts before Friday night, Schoeneweis had a combined 10 strikeouts.

Schoeneweis’ pitches appeared to have a little more movement Friday night, and his fastball seemed a little more brisk, hitting 93 mph at times.

But he may have also been aided by Diaz’s liberal strike zone--four Yankees went down looking, including Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius with runners at second and third and no outs in the fourth inning, third-strike calls that sent both grumbling back to the dugout.

“I don’t want to get into that,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said when asked about the strike zone, “but it was awful. I’m not going to [complain] about the strike zone. That’s not why we lost the game. But something has to be done. The hitters don’t know when to swing.

“I’ve talked to some umpires who have said, ‘Yeah, we allow [the length of] 2 1/2 balls off the plate.’ I don’t understand. If they’re going to do that, why don’t they just dig up the plate and make it bigger? It doesn’t make any sense that the umps are calling strikes on balls that don’t cross the plate.”

Reliever Mike Fyhrie helped preserve a three-run lead in the seventh when he got Glenallen Hill to fly to right on a bases-loaded, two-out, full-count pitch, and Mark Petkovsek pitched a scoreless eighth and ninth to close out the Angels’ third victory in their last four games. Fyhrie, however, was put on the 15-day disabled list after the game because of an inflamed right elbow.

The Angels staked Schoeneweis to a 4-0 lead in the first, and Garret Anderson’s clutch two-out, two-run double in the fifth turned a 4-3 lead into a 6-3 advantage.

The Angels then used some speed and power to tack on insurance runs in the seventh and eighth. Darin Erstad opened the seventh with a bloop single, his third hit of the game, and stole second and third. He scored on a dash to the plate on Mo Vaughn’s sacrifice fly to shallow left.

Third baseman Troy Glaus then took out an evening’s worth of frustration on Yankee reliever Randy Choate, crushing his 32nd homer of the season to left after striking out in his first three at-bats.

Yankee right-hander Orlando Hernandez, who entered with a very un-El-Duque-like 8-8 record and 4.80 earned-run average, looked as if he might not make it out of the first inning, which opened with Erstad’s single and Orlando Palmeiro’s walk.

After jumping ahead of Vaughn with two strikes, Hernandez nibbled with his next two pitches, both balls, before Vaughn ripped a two-run double into the right-field corner.

Tim Salmon struck out, but Anderson lined a two-run double to left, knocking in Vaughn for a 3-0 lead. Adam Kennedy’s two-out bloop single to left-center scored Anderson to make it 4-0.

Hernandez found a groove, blanking the Angels in the second, third and fourth innings, and the Yankees got back in the game with a run in the third, on Paul O’Neill’s RBI single, and two in the fifth, on Bernie Williams’ prodigious two-run homer to center, which traveled an estimated 425 feet.

In between, Schoeneweis pitched himself out of a major jam in the fourth, though the Yankees would argue that Diaz, as much as Schoeneweis, snuffed out their rally.