Angels Stumble Against Twins

If the uninspired play that continued to plague the Angels on Wednesday night during a 6-3 loss to the Minnesota Twins at the Metrodome doesn’t serve as some sort of wake-up call, then the team favored to win the American League West might get to snooze through most of October as well.

The Angels have scored three runs in two losses to the Twins despite collecting 21 hits, nine of which came Wednesday against struggling Minnesota starter Kyle Lohse. The right-hander, who had yielded a .314 average to batters before the game, gave up six hits during the Angels’ three-run fourth before escaping a bases-loaded mess to end the inning.

The Twins went on to break the resulting 3-3 tie in the sixth on home runs by Justin Morneau and Jacque Jones en route to winning for the 13th time in 15 games. The Angels remained 3 1/2 games behind the Oakland Athletics in their division but fell three games behind the Texas Rangers in the wild-card standings.

“We’re getting a lot of hits, and the offense seems like it’s going a little bit, but we just can’t get the big hit and it’s hurt us the last couple of days,” said Adam Kennedy, who led off the ninth with a double but was stranded at second base.

Angel Manager Mike Scioscia said he did not think his team’s energy was lagging, though it seemed listless on offense in every inning except the fourth.

“Effort’s always there with this club,” Scioscia said. “It’s the part of the season where you’ve got to keep going, and our guys will.”

After starter Ramon Ortiz dropped the Angels in a three-run hole in the third, his teammates showed some signs of life in the top of the fourth.

Vladimir Guerrero tagged Lohse’s first pitch of the inning for his 24th homer, a solo shot to left.

After Jose Guillen singled and moved to third on Darin Erstad’s double, Robb Quinlan drove in another run with a groundout to shortstop Cristian Guzman.

Kennedy then dropped a bunt single to the third-base side of the pitcher’s mound before Jose Molina tied the score with a bloop single to right.

David Eckstein loaded the bases with a single to right before Lohse (5-8) struck out Chone Figgins and got Garret Anderson to fly out to deep center field to avert further damage. Lohse went on to pitch seven innings for only the third time in 23 starts.

“You have a situation where you have the bases loaded ... you want to get a big hit and give our pitching staff a little room to work with,” Kennedy said. “It just hasn’t happened for us. We got 11 hits yesterday and no runs, and the same sort of deal today.”

Ortiz, making his third consecutive start in place of the injured Jarrod Washburn, kept the score deadlocked until the sixth, when Morneau whacked a slider for a towering homer to right-center and Jones followed two batters later with a two-run homer that barely eluded leaping left fielder Guillen.

“There’s nothing I can do -- they’re great hitters,” said Ortiz (3-7), who gave up 11 hits and six runs in 6 2/3 innings in the type of performance that led to his demotion to the bullpen in early May.

“The only thing I can do is my next game, go get it.”

Joe Nathan pitched a scoreless ninth to notch his 24th consecutive save, tying Eddie Guardado for the club record, though he needed 26 pitches to get through an inning in which Kennedy was left standing on second base after Curtis Pride hit a soft liner to second baseman Luis Rivas, Eckstein flied to right and Figgins took a called third strike.

“Tough two ballgames,” Scioscia said. “We’ve been beaten in pretty much every phase of the game these two games.

“We’re better, so we’ll pick it up and we’ll play better.”

Said Ortiz: “Anaheim will go to the playoffs this year, you’ll see.

“Two [losses] here in Minnesota, so what? We have a lot of good hitting and pitching.”

Little of which was displayed in the Metrodome the last two nights.