Blue Jays Stop the Angels, 3-1

They say momentum in baseball is only as good as your next day’s starting pitcher. Whoever coined the adage didn’t take this Angel offense into consideration.

Angel pitcher John Lackey was perfect through 4 2/3 innings Sunday and limited Toronto to three runs -- two earned -- and six hits in eight innings, a complete game in which he made “one mistake,” a fastball that Troy Glaus hammered for a 427-foot home run in the seventh inning.

But the Angels, as they have so often since 2005, rendered a dominant pitching performance moot, managing one hit in 7 1/3 innings against Blue Jay right-hander Casey Janssen, a former Fountain Valley High and UCLA pitcher who is filling in for injured A.J. Burnett.

Toronto closer B.J. Ryan gave up one hit over the final 1 2/3 innings to nail down the Blue Jays’ 3-1 victory in the Rogers Centre. Janssen got his first big-league win in his third start, and it came against the team he grew up rooting for in Orange County.

“You like to win when you have that kind of stuff,” Lackey said after the Angels’ eighth loss in 10 games, a game with so little offense it took only two hours to complete. “I felt as good today as I have all season.”

It didn’t matter. Lackey needed a shutout to win, because the way the Angels are hitting, pitchers have little margin for error.

In their last 13 games, the Angels are batting .204 with 38 runs, seven home runs and 19 doubles, their average plummeting from .278 on April 23 to .250 Sunday. They rank 12th in the American League in runs, 11th in home runs and 13th in walks and on-base percentage.

“We have guys who are banged up and young guys who are learning on the job -- we’re in a tough spot,” Lackey said. “You definitely know you have to pitch well. You know a couple of runs could mean the game.”

Toronto got the pair of runs it needed in the sixth, when Russ Adams singled, took second on John McDonald’s bunt and scored on Frank Catalanotto’s two-out double, and in the seventh, when Glaus, the former Angel, drove his 10th homer of the season off the facing of the third deck in left.

The Blue Jays added an insurance run in the eighth on third baseman Chone Figgins’ error, ending the Angels’ string of 14 consecutive games -- and 136 innings -- without an error.

But the Angels couldn’t muster a hit against Janssen until the sixth, when Figgins singled, and they advanced only three runners to second before scoring in the ninth, when Orlando Cabrera singled, took second and third on defensive indifference and came home on Garret Anderson’s sacrifice fly.

“[Janssen] was putting the ball in good spots, and we’re struggling -- that combination can produce a game like today,” Angel Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We didn’t get our offense going to produce anything close to a rally.”

Angel batting instructor Mickey Hatcher had a more pointed adjective for the offense.

“It’s ugly right now,” Hatcher said. “There are some things we’re going to talk about.... We don’t have the same kind of lineup as other teams, so we have to make things happen. We’ve got to weather the storm now and hope to turn things around. I can see frustration in a lot of guys. Mike’s beating his brains in. We all are.”

Along with their offensive struggles, the Angels have been unable to carry any kind of momentum from one day to the next. They won, 3-0, Saturday and were in good position to start a mini-win streak against Janssen, who has a decent fastball, curve, slider and changeup but is hardly overpowering.

But this Angel lineup has a history of struggling against pitchers they see for the first time, and Janssen took advantage of that Sunday, beating the team -- and some of the players -- he has idolized for years.

“It was a weird feeling, but it’s a cool feeling,” Janssen said. “I was an Angel fan through and through -- I watched countless games from my couch and in Angel Stadium. It was kind of special to pitch against them.”