Five Weeks Does Not a Season Make, but . . .

Sweep the Blue Jays? These are the Angels, remember.

Three games over .500 and 2 1/2 games out of first? This is May 11, remember.

It is too early to make much sense of anything that has happened in the major league baseball season so far. Most likely, Mark McGwire won’t hit 75 home runs this year. Most likely, Bill Swift won’t go 33-0. Most likely, the Dodgers won’t lose 119 games.

But after five weeks, they are on pace , as the statniks inform us, and for what it’s worth, the Angels, despite Sunday’s 4-1 loss to Toronto, are on pace to finish their 1992 schedule 89-73.

Most likely, that won’t happen, either. “It’s a six-month race,” notes Angel first baseman Alvin Davis. “Not a one-month race, not a three-month race.” And even the Cookie Rojas Angels played league-leading baseball for more than a month.

But if it is too soon to praise these Angels with any degree of certitude, it is also too soon to bury them--and that’s a bet that could have won you a free round in any sports bar in the land had you been willing to wager on April 5.

The Angels, opening the season with three virtual rookies in their starting infield, are 17-14.

The Angels, with Joe Grahe and Julio Valera in the starting rotation, are 9 1/2 games ahead of the Kansas City Royals in the American League West standings.

The Angels, haven to Rene Gonzales and Jose Gonzalez and Mike Fitzgerald and Ron Tingley, have a better record than both of the teams that played in the most recent World Series.

So what’s going right with these guys?

Pitching gets Davis’ initial vote, and Davis has been around long enough to appreciate the real thing, having played first bunker for the Seattle Mariners before escaping to the company of Abbott, Finley and Co.

“Just to give you some of my perspective,” Davis says, “I spent eight years in Seattle--seven of them without a .500 record. Last year, we won and the difference was the depth of our pitching staff. Quality and depth.

“With that kind of perspective, I can tell you that with the pitching we have here, we’ve got a chance every time we take the field. If you can catch the ball, you’ve got a chance.”

Or, often, even if you can’t, as the Angels’ first 31-game sampling has shown. Third baseman Gary Gaetti already has 10 errors and the double-play combination of Bobby Rose and Gary DiSarcina has 11, which helps explain the 2-4 record attached to Jim Abbott’s 2.44 earned-run average.

The Angels haven’t fielded, but they have pitched their way through it and, surprise of all surprises, they have hit their way through it.

DiSarcina, asked only to replace Dick Schofield at a fraction of the cost, is batting .303. Junior Felix, the supposed short end of the Devon White deal, has 26 RBIs in 28 games. Rene Gonzales, utilityman to the world, is hitting .354. Chad Curtis, ticketed for Edmonton before making Buck Rodgers a spring-training offer that couldn’t be refused, is batting .280 with four stolen bases in 20 games.

You will notice that DiSarcina, Felix and Curtis have yet to see the light of their 25th birthdays. Same for Valera, who shut out the Yankees in his last start. Same for Lee Stevens, the opening-day first baseman. Rose just turned 25.

Rodgers threw in the kids, without hesitation, for one simple reason: “You have to sit back and look at the alternatives.” After a roster-ravaged winter, Rodgers kept looking and looking.

“We felt in spring training that we had some young guys who could handle it,” Rodgers says. “We decided to go right in there with them and play whoever had the hot hand. Some of them have exceeded our expectations.”

The Angels also caught a break in the schedule, playing 13 of their first 24 games against the sixth- and seventh-place teams in the East (Milwaukee and Cleveland) and the sixth- and seventh-place teams in the West (Seattle and Kansas City). They played most of them on the road, away from the derisive “WALL-EE, WALL-EE” chants that burn Stevens’ ears and the bizarre sound-system music (Lounge-lizard versions of Beatles classics? “YMCA” by the Village People?) that drives everyone else to tears.

Rookies playing over their heads.

Tailor-made schedule for a team struggling to find a footing.

Is the Big-A just a house of cards, bracing for the first big gust?

Warning signs have been spotted on the horizon. Felix, who missed nearly 100 games last season due to a bum leg, is out with a sprained ankle. Bone spurs have been detected in the throwing arm of Lance Parrish, turning the catcher’s position into a platoon between Fitzgerald and Tingley, both hitting a perfect .200. The opening-day infield, excluding DiSarcina, has a cumulative batting average of .219.

Rodgers has been careful to tilt his sights no higher than realism will allow.

“I thought all along that we have the capability to play around .500,” the manager says. “We’re a couple games ahead of that now. Some things are going better than I thought they would, some things haven’t gone as well as I thought, like our pitching, which is just starting to come around.

“But, I feel a whole lot better than I did a couple weeks ago.”

Davis cautions that five weeks are merely five weeks. “A baseball team has to have a marathoner’s approach,” he says. “You can’t get too up or too down. You get too up and a bad stretch comes along and it sucks you in, like a whirlpool. A baseball season is just too long. There’s definitely going to be valleys.”

The Angels know the crevices all too well. It’s early, yes, but the Angels have climbed to the ridge and taken a look around. They seem to like the view.