Angels Taking Familiar Path

Mike Scioscia is not one to look back, and right now he doesn’t have to.

Only six games removed from the All-Star break, Scioscia’s Angels already appear to be staging an encore performance of last season’s second-half slide that transformed them from contenders to clunkers.

The evidence was in the details of an excruciating 14-5 loss to the Cleveland Indians on Tuesday afternoon in front of 40,000 at Angel Stadium that featured record-setting performances of the admirable variety by Indian slugger Travis Hafner and of the abhorrent variety by Angel pitcher Jarrod Washburn.

Washburn established a career high by giving up 13 hits and tied another by giving up four homers, two to Hafner. Cleveland’s designated hitter had a ninth-inning homer off Francisco Rodriguez to give him three for the game and five for the two-game series to tie a major league record.

Hafner, whose batting average improved from .316 to .331 during the series, finished four for four Tuesday with a career-high six runs batted in.

“You’ve got to turn the page,” Scioscia said. “Thank God we only get one loss for something like this.”

Victor Martinez had a three-run homer for the Indians, who blistered three Angel pitchers for 19 hits Tuesday and scored 22 runs in a two-game sweep that left the Angels five games behind the Texas Rangers in the American League West.

“You shake your head, try to laugh it off and worry about the next one,” said Washburn, whose earned-run average increased more than half a run, from 4.32 to 4.83, after giving up nine earned runs in 5 1/3 innings. “It’s not hard to forget about something like this.”

That might not hold true for the sub-.500 Indians, who have won five of six games against the Angels and probably have circled their calendar in anticipation of the three-game series involving the teams the first weekend of September in Cleveland.

“Hitting three home runs is special because it doesn’t happen very often, especially to me,” Hafner said. “I guess I can enjoy this one on the plane ride.”

The flight from Orange County to Dallas probably wasn’t nearly as pleasant for the Angels, who have lost three consecutive games and trail the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A’s by 2 1/2 games in the wild-card standings heading into a potentially critical two-game series against Texas.

“I’m not worried about us,” Washburn said. “I think we’re a better team than we’re playing, and we have to figure it out pretty soon and get more consistent.”

Washburn’s streak of 16 consecutive innings without giving up an earned run ended in the first when Matt Lawton hit a run-scoring single through the right side of the infield with nobody out.

Martinez singled in another run and Hafner got his first RBI with a sacrifice fly to make it 3-0.

Hafner made it a laugher with a three-run homer in the third before his solo homers in the fifth and ninth.

“He fouled off some tough pitches, he took a split-fingered [fastball] that was real good and then he hit a changeup out of the park,” Washburn said of Hafner’s third-inning at-bat. “That guy, he’s unbelievably locked in right now.”

The Angels appear headed in the opposite direction. Despite the increased expectations accompanying their $146-million off-season makeover, the Angels have the same 49-44 record that they did at this point last season en route to finishing 19 games behind the A’s.

After losing four of their first six games to start the second half, the Angels are only slightly ahead of last season’s second-half pace that saw them lose five of their first six.

“You’d like to get off to a better start, but the last couple of games are really the only ones that I’d be concerned with,” designated hitter Tim Salmon said. “The first four against Boston we played well.

“We just hit a team here that offensively can swing it. They’re hot and they’re clicking, and sometimes there’s not much you can do.”

Said Scioscia: “We’re a team right now that I feel is much better than the team we had in the second half of last year, and we’re going to play better than that.”