Tyler Chatwood pitches seven scoreless innings in Angels’ win over Mets

The realignment scenarios being discussed by Major League Baseball include one National League team jumping to the American League to create two 15-team leagues, which is too bad for the Angels.

If baseball were to seek volunteers from the AL to switch to the NL, the Angels would probably thrust their hands in the air like eager first-graders begging for the teacher to call on them.

Tyler Chatwood gave up four hits in seven scoreless innings, and Vernon Wells and Erick Aybar each knocked in three runs Sunday to lead the Angels to a 7-3 win over the New York Mets in Citi Field.

In taking two of three from the Mets, the Angels improved to 123-81 in interleague play since 2000, which is tied with the Boston Red Sox for the best mark in baseball. The Angels’ 28-11 interleague road record since 2007 is the best in baseball.

“Really? Wow, that’s pretty good,” Angels right fielder Torii Hunter said. “[Manager] Mike Scioscia might have something to do with that. He played his whole career in the National League, and we play an NL style, even though we’re an AL team. So when we play the NL, we know how to play their way.”

The Angels under Scioscia have always stressed pitching, defense, speed and aggressive baserunning more than most AL teams, and those are all staples of a good NL club.

But another factor in their success in NL parks is that they’ve rarely had a middle-of-the-order slugger who has been exclusively a designated hitter like David Ortiz is for the Red Sox.

They usually rotate the DH spot among several players, so when they play in NL parks, they can easily insert their DH into the field. The only exception has been when injuries prevented Vladimir Guerrero from playing right field.

“The big thing I look at is we haven’t been affected as much as other AL teams by taking a DH out of the lineup,” Scioscia said. “That has helped give us a deeper look offensively when we go into NL parks.”

Even without the DH, the Angels, who have been held to one or no runs 20 times this season, looked deep Sunday.

Aybar slapped a Jonathon Niese pitch the other way for a two-out, three-run triple to right field in the second, capping a rally that gave the Angels a 4-0 lead and included singles by Mark Trumbo and Peter Bourjos and Chatwood’s sacrifice bunt.

Wells hit a two-out run-scoring single in the first, a run-scoring single in the fifth and a solo homer in the seventh to make it 7-0 and push his average to .202, the first time the left fielder has been above .200 since he was one for four in the season opener.

And catcher Jeff Mathis, who entered with a .195 average, hit a solo homer to left in the sixth, his first since the season opener.

“When we got some mistakes, we hit them hard, and it led to a good offensive day,” Scioscia said. “We did a good job with runners in scoring position, we ran the bases well and hit a couple of home runs. We pressured them, got an early lead and held on.”

Chatwood, who was tagged for five runs and five hits in 32/3 innings of his last start, a 9-0 loss to Kansas City on June 12, issued four walks, three to lead off innings, but he also kept dynamic leadoff hitter Jose Reyes off base four times.

With two on and one out in the first, Aybar made a lunging grab of Daniel Murphy’s one-hop smash toward the middle to start a double play. With two on and one out in the second, Chatwood (4-4) struck out Ruben Tejada and Niese.

With two on and none out in the fifth, the 21-year-old right-hander got pinch-hitter Willie Harris, Reyes and Justin Turner to fly out.

“The walks weren’t planned, but I had better command out of the stretch than from the windup today,” Chatwood said. “That helped out a lot.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com