Angels soften trade blow

The Angels’ offensive drought had reached such epic proportions this week that hitters repeatedly brought their irritation back to the bench, a habit that Manager Mike Scioscia addressed Thursday in Chicago during a postgame meeting.

There were nothing but high-fives and smiles in the dugout in the 10th inning Friday at Oakland-Alameda Coliseum after light-hitting Erick Aybar smoked a leadoff homer to lift the Angels to a 6-5 victory over the Oakland Athletics.

Aybar’s homer, which cleared the right-field wall on a 2-and-0 pitch from reliever Andrew Bailey, ended the Angels’ four-game losing streak and momentarily softened the blow of division rival Texas’ acquisition of Seattle ace Cliff Lee earlier in the day.

“He has some pop in that little body of his,” Angels center fielder Torii Hunter said of Aybar, whose homer was his third of the season.

Aybar’s winning hit also capped an outburst in which the Angels scored more runs and collected more homers (three) than they had extra-base hits (two) during the four-game sweep by the Chicago White Sox preceding their arrival here.

“It was good to break out,” Scioscia said.

Hunter’s two-out, two-run homer off reliever Craig Breslow in the eighth inning had given the Angels a seemingly comfortable 5-3 lead.

But Angels setup man Fernando Rodney couldn’t hold it. Ryan Sweeney hit a leadoff double to left-center in the bottom of the eighth and scored on Kurt Suzuki’s single to right. Suzuki scored the tying run when Angels left fielder Juan Rivera couldn’t cleanly field Kevin Kouzmanoff’s double to left.

There was far less drama in the bottom of the 10th, when Angels closer Brian Fuentes pitched a perfect inning for his 16th save. Kevin Jepsen got the victory after pitching a 1-2-3 ninth.

Joel Pineiro continued to bolster the Angels’ rotation by pitching seven strong innings, but the Athletics’ rally denied his bid to win a seventh consecutive start. Pineiro, who gave up eight hits and three runs, has pitched at least seven innings in seven of his last 11 starts.

Angels hitting coach Mickey Hatcher said the offensive downturn he observed this week was “probably the worst four games I’ve seen our team have offensively in a row in a long time.”

The Angels scored five runs and hit .138 with runners in scoring position against the White Sox, prompting players to bring their frustration back to the dugout.

“That’s one of the things that Mike talked about,” Hatcher said. “You can’t bring your at-bats back to the bench. It’s one of those things that we’ve gone through.”

So it must have felt like a huge relief when the Angels splurged for two first-inning runs Friday, matching their total from the previous 23 innings.

Aybar sparked the outburst with a bunt single and stole second base with one out before Bobby Abreu crushed a two-run homer over the left-field wall. It was the Angels’ first extra-base hit in 30 innings and Abreu’s first homer since June 22, a span of 50 at-bats.

Abreu, who went three for four with a walk, said being out of the lineup the previous day “helped freshen me up and calm me down. I was forcing too much, and today I just played my game.”

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ben.bolch@latimes.com

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New gun in Texas

Since a difficult 2007 season in which he was 5-8 with a 6.29 ERA, Cliff Lee, who was traded to the Texas Rangers on Friday, has become one of baseball’s top left-handers.

2008 Cleveland

*--* W-L IP BB SO CG ERA 22-3 223.1 34 170 4 2.54 *--*

2009 Cleveland | Phila.

*--* W-L IP BB SO CG ERA 14-13 231.2 43 181 6 3.22 *--*

2010 Seattle

*--* W-L IP BB SO CG ERA 8-3 103.2 6 89 5 2.34 *--*