Blue Jays’ Frye Burns the Angels

TORONTO —  It’s not that Jeff Frye is an afterthought, but when you face a powerful Toronto Blue Jay lineup that includes Carlos Delgado, Raul Mondesi, Jose Cruz Jr., Tony Batista and Shannon Stewart, a little slap-hitting second baseman in the ninth spot is the least of your concerns.

That’s why Angel pitcher Scott Schoeneweis didn’t think twice about grooving a first-pitch, waist-high fastball to Frye to open the seventh inning of a scoreless game Sunday.

Schoeneweis just wanted to get ahead of Frye in the count. He wound up falling behind in the score, though, when Frye smacked the pitch over the wall in left field to spark Toronto’s 2-0 victory over the Angels before 23,949 in SkyDome.

Frye, a .205 hitter who has all of 15 home runs in his eight-year major league career, snapped an 0-for-16 slump with his home run and added a run-scoring single in the eighth inning to help the Blue Jays match their club record for wins in April with 16.

The Angels, who didn’t help their cause by running into two outs on the basepaths, remain 10 games behind Seattle in the American League West after going 3-7 on their trip to Seattle, Cleveland and Toronto.

“No matter who is in the batter’s box, I’m going to bear down,” said Schoeneweis, who gave up only one run and five hits, walked four and struck out two in a strong seven-inning performance.

“Am I worried about a guy like [Frye] taking me out of the yard? No. Am I worried about falling behind a guy like that and walking him to start a rally? Yes. Especially when he’s the nine-hole guy and you have those other guys coming up behind him.”

To blame this loss on Schoeneweis wouldn’t be fair. The left-hander kept the Angels in the game, as he has done in all six of his starts this season, going six innings or more and giving up no more than three earned runs in each of his games.

But an offense that was Darin Erstad-less for the second consecutive game--the center fielder was out because of lower back spasms--failed to come up with a clutch hit off Toronto starter Steve Parris, who entered with a 10.45 earned-run average, and made two critical mistakes on the basepaths.

With runners on first and third and one out in the fifth, Benji Gil was caught leaning off the first base bag and slipped and fell when Parris threw over.

Gil was out in a rundown, Adam Kennedy held at third, and Delgado, the Toronto first baseman, made a diving stop of Orlando Palmeiro’s shot down the line and tossed to Parris covering first to end the inning.

Palmeiro singled off Blue Jay reliever Kelvim Escobar with one out in the eighth, and after Scott Spiezio’s fly out, Escobar fell behind No. 3 batter Tim Salmon with a first-pitch ball.

Manager Mike Scioscia flashed the steal sign, but Palmeiro got a little too eager and broke for second before Escobar went to the plate. Escobar threw to first in time to pick off Palmeiro, who was tagged out in a rundown, and the inning was over.

“Part of stealing a base is taking a chance, and it didn’t work out for me,” Palmeiro said. “You’re pretty much dead in that situation. It’s not a good feeling. When things don’t come easy, you try a little harder. That’s what you want to stay away from, but that’s easier said than done.”

Scioscia doesn’t mind mistakes because of aggressiveness, but he said Gil lowered his head for a split-second when he was on base in the fifth, and that may have contributed to the pickoff.

“That happens,” Scioscia said, “but that’s certainly not the way you’re supposed to go about it with runners on first and third.”

Spiezio also got picked off first Saturday, and Jose Fernandez was picked off first in the seventh inning of Thursday’s 6-5 loss in Cleveland when the Angels had a hit-and-run play on.

“We’ve had some baserunning problems on this trip,” Scioscia said. “Mistakes of aggression I can live with, but this stuff crosses the line. We have to be a little more heads-up. If you’re aggressive, you’re going to run into some outs, but we’re running into preventable outs.”

Gil believes he would have made it back to first if he hadn’t slipped. To compound matters, Gil slightly twisted his left ankle and had his toe stepped on during the rundown.

“I was running on a 3-and-1 count, I read the pitcher going home and slipped,” said Gil, who was able to finish the game. “All of a sudden I was in no-man’s land.”