The
Napoli tormented his old team again Sunday, blasting a two-run home run in the second inning and a two-run double in the eighth to lead the
Napoli, the former Angels catcher who was traded after the 2010 season, had four home runs and eight runs batted in to help the Red Sox win two of three games in the series. The slugger has a .333 average (55 for 165) with 18 home runs and 36 RBIs against his former club.
The loss dropped the Angels to 22-22 overall and 5-5 on their trip through Baltimore, Toronto and Boston. They're 6 1/2 games behind first-place Houston in the
"It's a long season," first baseman
The Angels aren't hitting enough to support a pitching staff that has kept them in most games, including Sunday's, when
One-quarter of the way through the season, the Angels rank last in the major leagues in on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.649), 25th in runs (167) and 27th in extra-base hits. They've been held to three runs or less in 24 of 44 games.
Mike Trout (.301, 11 home runs, 25 RBIs) and Kole Calhoun (.287, 22 RBIs) are having strong seasons,
But Pujols is hitting .229 with eight home runs and 16 RBIs,
"We're at .500, and we haven't played anywhere near our potential," Iannetta said. "We have guys who can really swing it, and we haven't done that yet, at least, consistently, as a unit. When that starts happening, you can go on those streaks where you rattle off a few in a row."
The question is whether the Angels have the personnel in-house to produce enough runs.
They've been particularly soft from the left side, and there has already been trade speculation, with Oakland's
"We haven't defined anything specific, but we're scouting the landscape, as we always do," General Manager
The Angels broke out for a 12-5 win over Boston on Friday night, scoring nine runs in the fifth inning, but the outburst generated no momentum. Facing knuckleballer Steven Wright on Saturday and left-hander
Pujols scoffed when asked whether he was surprised there was no carry-over effect from Friday night.
"What do you think, we're playing Nintendo here, and we're going to score 13 runs every night?" he said.
Manager
"All the things we need to create offense are not there on a consistent basis," Scioscia said. "We have confidence in the guys on our roster and some of the guys on our depth chart, but they haven't performed."
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