Angels will be traveling heavy

The Angels might want to double-check their luggage this morning to make sure the bats they packed were the same ones they used during a homestand in which they transformed Angel Stadium into something more closely resembling Coors Field.

The offensive outburst continued Thursday afternoon during an 11-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Angels set a season high for runs and concluded an unusually productive stretch in which they averaged nearly eight runs and won six of seven games at home.

It has been a different story so far this season for the Angels on the road, where they’ve averaged only two runs while going a major league-worst 1-7. They’ve also had their share of weather woes.

The forecast for today in Chicago, where the Angels are scheduled to open a three-game series, calls for cloudy skies, temperatures in the 50s and a 30% chance of rain.

But there was little that could dampen the Angels’ mood Thursday, when they sent nine batters to the plate in the first inning and received another strong pitching performance from Bartolo Colon while improving to a major league-best 11-3 at home.

“It’s good for us to go on the road like that, scoring a lot of runs,” said Orlando Cabrera, whose two-run double in the third inning gave the Angels a 9-0 lead. “We’re going to need that against Chicago.”

Every Angels position player had at least one hit except for third baseman Brandon Wood, who went hitless in four at-bats with two strikeouts in his major league debut. Shea Hillenbrand and Gary Matthews Jr. paced a 13-hit attack with three hits apiece, with Matthews extending his streak of consecutive multi-hit games to six.

The Angels, who outscored the Devil Rays, 20-4, in the two-game series, essentially put the game out of reach in a five-run first inning that was highlighted by Vladimir Guerrero’s two-run homer and Hillenbrand’s run-scoring double to left, his first extra-base hit of the season.

“It really doesn’t matter what color uniform we have on, whether it’s gray or white,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We need to play the way we’ve played this last week on the road.”

Perhaps even more encouraging than the offensive outburst was the dominance of Colon (2-0). The Angels were so concerned about the pitcher’s twisted left ankle that he suffered while covering first base last Saturday that they had Dustin Moseley warming up before the game as an insurance policy.

But Colon showed no ill effects from the injury, giving up four hits and two runs in seven innings and striking out 11, the most by an Angels pitcher this season. The only blemish on an outing in which Colon’s fastballs were still registering 95 mph in the seventh inning was a two-run homer he surrendered to Carlos Pena in the fourth.

Colon struck out the side in the seventh and then walked off the field to a standing ovation from the crowd of 35,597 and high-fives in the dugout from his teammates.

“What I told myself that last inning was that I wanted to let it loose to see how my arm was really feeling,” said Colon, making his second start since suffering a torn rotator cuff last July. “It came out pretty good.”

Said Scioscia: “This is the first time in a while we’ve seen that extra gear, that extra kick that he has, and that’s what’s encouraging.”

ben.bolch@latimes.com