Angel Losses Multiply

NEW YORK — For the Angels, this was a lost series. They lost two games out of three. They lost two players to the disabled list. They lost their tenuous grip on first place.

For the first time since June 25, the Angels are in third place in the American League West. They lost their lead in the wild-card standings too, after a 4-2 loss to the New York Yankees on Thursday night dropped them one game behind the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners.

They open a four-game series tonight in Boston, against a Red Sox team 2 1/2 games behind the Angels in the wild-card race. The Angels had hoped their No. 3 hitter, outfielder Tim Salmon, would return tonight. Instead, they put him on the disabled list Thursday, after his badly bruised left hand failed to respond to more than a week of treatment. The Angels put starter Aaron Sele on the disabled list Wednesday.

Oh, and Pedro Martinez pitches tonight for Boston. The Angels have persevered through adversity all season, but this attrition at a critical time might make an Angel fan hardened by previous collapses of late August and early September wonder whether another might be unfolding and how much attrition is too much to overcome.

“There is such a thing as too much,” pitcher Jarrod Washburn said, “but I don’t think we’re at a point where we’re going to throw in the towel and call it a season. I don’t think we’re at the point of shaking our heads and saying we can’t do it.

“If we lost Darin Erstad tomorrow, then maybe you’d have to say enough is enough.”

Said Erstad: “We lost a couple games, but it’s not like we’re out of it. We’re right there. There’s no urgency or panic in here.”

The Angels are 8-3 since Salmon last started, but the first 10 of those games were against Toronto, Detroit and Cleveland, teams a combined 72 games out of first place.

They lost the series to the Yankees. They lost Salmon, who is hitting .395 this month and .339 since the All-Star break. And, with a bad weekend in Boston, they could fall behind the Red Sox in the wild-card race.

In the first three games of the series, the Red Sox will start Martinez and Derek Lowe, the starters with the lowest earned-run averages in the league, and oft-frustrating knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.

No urgency about the weekend?

“This team has played with a sense of urgency every single day this year,” Erstad said. “And we’re going to continue to do a great job of that.”

And what of falling out of first place and into third?

“We’re going to look at the standings on the last day of the season,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We haven’t looked at the standings when we’ve been in first place. We’re not going to start now.”

The Angels lost the season series to the Yankees for the first time since 1997, losing four of seven games this season.

The Yankees snapped the three-game winning streak of Angel rookie John Lackey, who nonetheless pitched his first major league complete game. He gave up four runs and 11 hits, but he needed only 100 pitches to complete his eight innings before a typically rowdy Yankee Stadium crowd of 43,222.

“The fans were going crazy, and I got a little fired up,” he said.

The Angels should have done better against Yankee starter David Wells. Alex Ochoa hit his first home run since joining the Angels in a July 31 trade, and Troy Glaus doubled home another run, but with runners on second and third and one out in the fourth inning, Wells struck out Shawn Wooten and Benji Gil

Lackey staggered a bit in the first inning, striking out two but also loading the bases on a single, walk and hit batter. Raul Mondesi singled home two runs, giving the Yankees the lead for good.

“It had nothing to do with nerves,” Lackey said. “I can’t guarantee you performance every time, but I can guarantee you it won’t be because I’m scared.”