Escobar’s Blister a Pain for Angels

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. —  It’s not the mound. It’s not pitching indoors, amid the air-conditioned comfort of a domed stadium. It’s not even the cozy dimensions of a field with 370-foot power alleys.

Kelvim Escobar can’t put his finger on the exact reason he has had so little success in Tropicana Field, and even if he could, it would have stung to do so Tuesday night.

The Angel right-hander developed a blister on the middle finger of his pitching hand in the first inning against Tampa Bay, and Escobar’s Tropicana Field woes worsened as the Angels lost, 8-3, to the Devil Rays in front of a crowd of 9,537.

Escobar entered Tuesday’s game with a 2-4 career record and 8.48 earned-run average in Tropicana Field. After giving up five runs on six hits in a laborious 4 2/3 innings -- of his 111 pitches, 56 were strikes -- Escobar is now 2-5 with an 8.60 ERA there.

It marked only the second time in 24 games that Escobar, the Angels’ most consistent and effective starter, failed to finish the fifth inning. His first was on May 11, when he did not return after a 2-hour, 18-minute rain delay after the third inning in Yankee Stadium.

After Darin Erstad’s two-run home run in the top of the fifth gave the Angels a 3-2 lead, Escobar (7-9) gave it right back, giving up three runs in the bottom of the fifth -- one on Julio Lugo’s sacrifice fly and two on Toby Hall’s double into the left-field corner -- as the Devil Rays went ahead, 5-3.

Tampa Bay pulled away with three runs off reliever Kevin Gregg in the eighth, as the Angels fell two games behind Oakland in the American League West and 1 1/2 games behind Boston and Texas in the wild-card standings.

“I don’t like to make excuses, but it did bother me,” Escobar said of the blister, which popped in the third inning and then grew back. “I still threw the ball pretty well, but I didn’t have good location, and I couldn’t get my breaking stuff down.”

Escobar gutted out a five-inning performance at Oakland on April 24, pitching the final four innings with blood oozing from a split fingernail on his middle finger. He got the win that day, but the injury forced him to miss one start.

The same fingernail broke again when Escobar pitched in Kansas City on June 6, and he developed a small blister on the finger in his last start, against Baltimore last Wednesday night.

“This was worse than the one in Oakland because I didn’t feel any pain that day,” Escobar said. “Today, it was sore. The blister got big and popped in the third inning, and then it came back right away. But I didn’t want to come out of the game. Hopefully, it will heal in four days, and I should be fine.”

Escobar’s fastball still hit 95 mph, but he didn’t have much command of it, as the welt on Tino Martinez’s back will prove. Escobar, trying to come inside on Tampa Bay’s veteran first baseman in the fifth inning, drilled him in the back of the right shoulder, loading the bases and angering Martinez.

“I wasn’t trying to hit anyone,” Escobar said. “I have a lot of respect for that guy; he’s been around a long time, and he’s a good guy. I know he was [ticked off], but I was trying to go in on his hands. The ball slipped out of my hand, and I overthrew it.”

After Lugo’s sacrifice fly tied the score, Hall’s two-out double gave Tampa Bay the lead. Jose Cruz Jr. was intentionally walked, and Angel Manager Mike Scioscia pulled Escobar in favor of Brendan Donnelly, who struck out Jorge Cantu to end the fifth.

“The blister definitely got worse as the game went on,” Scioscia said. “He still made some terrific pitches, but he got into some hitting counts in the fifth, and he couldn’t put his pitches where he wanted. He couldn’t finish off Hall, and his pitch count was high.”

Devil Ray right-hander Dewon Brazelton (5-3) gave up three runs and eight hits in 5 1/3 innings to gain the win, and hard-throwing reliever Jesus Colome added 2 2/3 hitless innings to snuff out any Angel hopes of a comeback.