At Least Angels See How Winners Do It : Baseball: Blue Jays have the right stuff in 6-2 victory, California’s seventh loss in a row.

A team that showed promise in April and May is barely showing up in July.

In their latest flat performance, the Angels collected three hits Sunday in a 6-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays at the SkyDome, their seventh successive defeat and 11th in their last 13 games. David Wells (4-3) was on the verge of losing his spot in the rotation after several rocky starts, but he gave up only two hits in his final six innings. That left the Angels 2-15 against left-handers and unable to explain it.

“It seems like anyone can beat us, left-handed or right-handed,” shortstop Gary DiSarcina said. “We’re just not doing the job.

“We’re not doing anything right. We’re missing signs, we’re not moving runners over, we’re hitting the first pitch. We’re not giving their pitchers a chance to make mistakes. We’re not in the right place at the right time on defense half the time, and we’re not doing anything that’s good.”

For the definition of “good,” he pointed to the Blue Jays. Home runs by Joe Carter, Candy Maldonado and former Angel Devon White off Julio Valera (4-8) coupled with decent work by Wells and reliever Mike Timlin gave Toronto its fourth consecutive victory and a three-game lead over Baltimore in the AL East. The Blue Jays’ 49-31 record is their best after 80 games.

Carter, whose two-run homer hit the left-field scoreboard and brought roars from the crowd of 50,398, sympathized with the Angels’ struggles.

“Any time you’re not scoring runs, you’re going to look flat,” he said. “(Saturday), when they were up, 6-1, and we came back, that had to hurt them. I’ve been on both sides. In Cleveland, it was like that. You just come to the ballpark every day hoping something different will happen.

“We’re playing well. We’re getting good pitching and hitting about as well as we can. If we continue doing that, it will be tough for the Angels or anybody else to beat us.”

The Angels couldn’t do it Sunday. They manufactured a run in the first inning on a single by Luis Polonia, a walk, a ground out and Gary Gaetti’s sacrifice fly, but fell behind in the bottom of the inning on Carter’s 18th homer. In the second, Junior Felix’s failure to hold onto Alfredo Griffin’s fly to center and catcher Mike Fitzgerald’s errant throw to third enabled the Blue Jays to build a 4-1 lead.

Maldonado made it 5-1 in the fourth inning with a shot to left, and although Chad Curtis hit the Angels’ first homer in 69 1/3 innings, off the facing of the second deck in left in the sixth, White’s homer to right got that run back for the Blue Jays.

“We played Minnesota and Toronto in the last week, the two top teams (in their respective divisions), and it’s like night and day compared to us. It’s like two teams at the opposite end of the spectrum,” DiSarcina said. “I’ve learned more the last seven days against those two teams than in the last three years. They don’t hurt themselves, and they do the little things right. From one through nine, their lineup is solid. Like Dave Winfield trying to bunt (in the seventh inning Saturday). They were up a run, and he tried to move the runner over. I’m sure he didn’t have the bunt sign.

“We’re playing the opposite way Buck (Rodgers) wants us to play. He always said, ‘If you make a mistake, make an aggressive mistake.’ Now we’re between aggressive and safe, and you can’t play safe, especially where we are now and against these teams. We’ve got nothing to lose. Instead of station to station, make the other team screw up. Try to bunt. I know as an infielder, when the hitter bunts, there are a lot of ways infielders can screw up. We’re not bunting for hits. People have gotten away from that.”

Interim Manager John Wathan, could do little but shake his head in frustration.

“It’s not good right now, that’s for sure,” Wathan said. “You hope to finish strong before the (All-Star) break and start the second half as fresh as you can. You can’t undo what’s been done. You just keep hoping every day you’ll get a win and get something started. We’re not playing well, and there’s no way to disguise it.”