Angels Never Let White Sox Up, 12-5

This was the kind of night Manager Mike Scioscia has been waiting for, a game in which the Angels didn’t necessarily pound an opponent into submission or break loose for that one humongous inning, but one in which they applied constant offensive pressure throughout.

The Angels, who struggled to score runs for most of April, scored in five of the eight innings they batted and had a season-high 16 hits en route to a 12-5 victory over the Chicago White Sox before 15,516 in Edison Field Wednesday night.

The bottom four hitters in the order, Scott Spiezio, Wally Joyner, Bengie Molina and Adam Kennedy, combined to go 11 for 16 with nine runs batted in and seven runs. The Angels scored six runs in the first three innings, and every time Chicago mounted a comeback, the Angels answered with authority.

“This game’s easy, isn’t it?” Scioscia said jokingly afterward. “It’s really great to come out and swing the bats like this against this team because they never quit. . . . We attacked the ball great. That was probably the best we’ve swung the bats all year.”

With such an outburst should come momentum, something the Angels have not been able to generate offensively all season.

“This is going to help our confidence,” said Molina, who, like Joyner and Kennedy, had three hits. “Guys are going to go up there [tonight] saying, ‘I know I can hit. I’ve done this before.’ ”

The beneficiary of the rare Angel uprising was left-hander Jarrod Washburn, who went from “stinking up the field” in Friday night’s 12-4 loss to Toronto to his first win of the season.

Washburn moved his lively fastball around the strike zone and gave up four runs on seven hits in 6 1/3 innings, striking out one and walking three before yielding to reliever Ben Weber, who gave up one run over the final 2 2/3 innings.

“We have to get confidence back from our pitchers,” Joyner said. “We have to show them that they don’t have to throw a perfect game or make a perfect pitch each time.”

Though the Angels had considerable breathing room throughout the game, there were some harrowing moments. The first came in the top of the sixth when Chicago’s Magglio Ordonez opened with a popup in front of the mound.

Instead of taking control and calling for the ball, Washburn looked toward Joyner, who was playing too deep at first to reach it, and Molina, the catcher who hesitated before heading toward the mound.

The ball dropped for an infield double, and Paul Konerko laced an RBI double over center fielder Darin Erstad’s head to pull the White Sox to within 6-3. After Herbert Perry’s lineout, Sandy Alomar singled to left, putting runners on first and third.

But Erstad raced in to make a sliding catch of Tony Graffanino’s flare to shallow center, Konerko holding at third, and Washburn got Royce Clayton to ground out, ending the inning.

The Angels added an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth when David Eckstein singled, took second on Erstad’s sacrifice bunt and scored on Garret Anderson’s two-out single to right.

Carlos Lee’s two-run homer off Weber pulled the White Sox to within 7-5 in the top of the seventh, but Joyner, Molina and Kennedy each had hits in the seventh and eighth innings, as the Angels scored five runs to pull away and send the White Sox, who have gone from first to worst in the American League Central, to their 13th loss in 17 games.

The bottom of the Angel order had been relatively quiet of late, but Kennedy, who bats ninth, highlighted a three-run second with a two-run homer, and Spiezio keyed a three-run third with a two-run single.

That hit tripled Spiezio’s RBI total for the season--he had one RBI in 20 games--and doubled the run production of Angel designated hitters, who entered Wednesday night’s game with a .119 average (12 for 101), one homer and two RBIs.