Angels searching for runs

Justin Speier walked three consecutive batters, with the last walk forcing home a run and sending him to the showers. As he crossed the foul line and approached the Angels’ dugout, Speier took off his cap and tossed it into the stands.

“That hat didn’t have any more outs in it,” Speier said.

That was worth a chuckle, perhaps, but Manager Mike Scioscia found nothing funny in the Angels’ 9-4 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Saturday at Angel Stadium. Scioscia ordered the clubhouse doors shut immediately after the game, then lectured the players for a few minutes.

Scioscia wouldn’t say what he said in the meeting, but there was no mistaking his frustration at the Angels’ prolonged offensive drought. In their last 23 games, they have scored more than five runs once.

“We’re searching,” Scioscia said. “We’ve been searching for a long time.”

The Angels stopped Chipper Jones, but they couldn’t stop the Braves -- or the Joneses, for that matter. Chipper Jones was hitless in three at-bats -- his batting average dropped to .409 -- but rookie outfielder Brandon Jones had three hits, including his first major league home run.

Kelly Johnson homered too, as the Braves tagged Ervin Santana (8-3) for a season-high six runs in 5 2/3 innings. Santana shut out the Braves for the first four innings, then gave up four runs in the fifth. And, after not giving up two home runs in any previous start this season, he gave up two in the sixth inning, in the span of three batters.

“My command was good,” Santana said, “but not very good.”

That wasn’t the case for Atlanta starter Charlie Morton, who won his major league debut by giving up three runs in six innings, scattering five hits and one walk.

The Braves selected Morton in the third round of a productive 2002 draft, in which they picked All-Star catcher Brian McCann in the second round and outfielder Jeff Francoeur in the first.

The Angels managed three hits against Morton in the first five innings, including a two-run double by Maicer Izturis. Afterward, Torii Hunter said the Angels’ players weren’t provided with a scouting report or video highlights of Morton.

“We had no report,” Hunter said. “We had nothing. We had a bunch of nothing to go off.”

Still, he said, the Angels should have done better.

“I can have excuses all day,” he said. “I have none. We should have gotten the job done. We need to step it up and stop having excuses, all of us.”

The Angels have built a team dependent more on aggressive baserunning than on pure power, so they need baserunners. They rank 12th in the American League in on-base percentage, ahead of only the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Mariners.

They have not built a team with players who like to take a walk. But even by the Angels’ free-swinging standards, Scioscia suggested there is too much hacking going on.

“Some guys that should be working counts aren’t doing as good a job as they should be,” he said.

Scioscia talked about the stale offense with reporters, as he surely had with his players, and finally he was talked out. He took a sip from the water bottle on his desk and asked a question of his own.

“What have we averaged in runs over the past 50 games?” he said.

The answer: 3.9. It speaks for itself.

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bill.shaikin@latimes.com