Angels move further away from a playoff spot

The Angels’ chartered airplane touched down at Chicago Midway International Airport after 3 a.m. Monday, their “Sunday Night Baseball” victory in Houston already immaterial. The team buses reached a reserved Michigan Avenue hotel at about 4 a.m.

To compensate, the buses set off for the ballpark later than normal in the afternoon. Still, the shift in schedule lingered in the Angels’ spirits.

“I’m like a zombie right now,” Ben Revere said upon arrival at Guaranteed Rate Field. “I don’t want to move. I just want to take a nap.”

The Angels played like zombies often on a sleepy Monday.

The 92-loss Chicago White Sox topped them 4-2 and sent their playoff hopes tumbling even further down September’s slope.

“That was disappointing,” Mike Trout said. “That was a tough loss.”

The White Sox announced a crowd of 13,443 fans. Far fewer took their seats throughout a tranquil evening on the South Side.

Chicago struck first, aided by an Andrelton Simmons error on an attempted double play. With two men on and two out in the first inning, Angels starter Ricky Nolasco surrendered a two-run double to Nicky Delmonico.

Nolasco gave up another run in the third, again hurt by a misplay from a typically deft defense. Justin Upton slid for and reached an Avisail Garcia drive, but lost it in the lights. It went as a triple. Garcia scored on a sacrifice fly.

In between, the Angels managed one run when Simmons singled, Luis Valbuena walked and Martin Maldonado singled. Trout made it two with a fifth-inning solo shot, fighting back from a 0-and-2 count to get to 3-and-2. There, White Sox starter James Shields left a cutter over the middle of the plate, and Trout clobbered it 457 feet to left-center.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia tried to wring one last inning out of Nolasco. When back-to-back singles began the sixth, Scioscia abandoned that plan. He split the rest of the inning between relievers Jose Alvarez and Blake Wood, who let in the lead runner but no one else.

Over another hour, no one else scored. Shields finished seven innings for only the second time this season, the 35-year-old’s revamped delivery working well.

Fed up with his umpteenth failed start of the season last month, Shields experimented with lowering his release point and found greater success, if not actual success.

Few starting pitchers release the baseball as low to the ground as he now does.

“That,” Trout said, “was definitely a different Shields.”

Shields’ season has typified Chicago’s: awful at first, and still not good, but better. Because of the tanking team’s late-season call-ups, the Angels encountered a more talented White Sox team than most major league clubs did this year.

For his third consecutive start, Nolasco described his performance with the word “decent,” or one of its colloquial derivatives. He is right. He owns a 3.38 earned-run average in that span. Yet the Angels have lost all three games, and 22 of Nolasco’s 32 starts this season.

It is a paradox. Nolasco is the rotation’s lone constant, the Angels’ only starter to make it through the year. A dozen other men have made starts, and all of them at some point suffered a demotion or an injury or a shift to the bullpen.

But, absent the losses they have incurred with Nolasco on the mound, they would still be in the playoff picture.

Now, the Angels (77-79) are about out of it. The only way they can earn the American League’s second wild-card slot outright is if they win all six of their remaining games and the Minnesota Twins lose all six of theirs. If they lose once or Minnesota wins once, the two teams would play a 163rd game on Monday in Minneapolis.

If both conditionals come true or one does more than once, the Angels’ season will end Sunday afternoon at Angel Stadium.

It is, as Upton said Monday, a “tough spot.”

“All we can do is try to play our best baseball and see what happens,” said the left fielder who has carried the Angels for most of this month.

Asked if his team’s philosophy would be to keep playing until it was eliminated, Scioscia demurred.

“Play until we get in,” the manager said. “How about that?”

Short hops

Third baseman Yunel Escobar will play an instructional league game Tuesday in Arizona, and likely another Wednesday. … Left-hander Andrew Heaney remains on track to start Thursday. He’ll throw a bullpen session Tuesday as his final step to return from shoulder soreness.

pedro.moura@latimes.com

Follow Pedro Moura on Twitter @pedromoura