Angels bottom out again

The starting pitcher gave up six runs and five hits and walked five in 32/3 innings, and five relievers yielded an additional seven runs and 10 hits in 51/3 innings. The fifth through ninth hitters combined for two hits in 19 at-bats.

Is this any way to begin a September playoff push?

It is if you’re the Angels, who don’t really have much of a choice, at least until Manager Mike Scioscia decides to play promising 20-year-old outfielder Mike Trout every day at the expense of struggling veterans Bobby Abreu and Vernon Wells.

General Manager Tony Reagins failed to upgrade a shaky back of the rotation, an unreliable middle-relief corps or a spotty offense before the July 31 and Aug. 31 trade deadlines, and the Angels seem ill-equipped to chase down a superior Texas club.

Pitcher Tyler Chatwood never gave the Angels a chance Friday night in a 13-5 loss to the Minnesota Twins. With the Rangers having manhandled Boston, 10-0, the Angels now trail Texas by 4 1/2 games in the American League West with 24 games to play.

The Angels are a playoff-caliber club -- maybe even a championship-caliber club -- with Jered Weaver, Dan Haren or Ervin Santana on the mound, going 51-35 in games they’ve started.

They’re non-contenders without those three, going 23-29 in games started by the rest of the staff, which has consisted mostly of Chatwood and Joel Pineiro.

The problem when Chatwood and Pineiro struggle is it forces the Angels to go early to their bullpen and the likes of Hisanori Takahashi, Rich Thompson and Fernando Rodney.

Rodney, who just last season was a key setup man and sometimes closer for the Angels, provided the lowlight Friday night, allowing the Twins to load the bases in the eighth and forcing in two runs with walks before getting booed off the mound.

The four-run rally salted the victory for the lowly Twins, who are 58-79 and played Friday night without top hitter Joe Mauer, who was scratched because of an upper respiratory infection. But the game seemed over long before that.

Chatwood has a live arm that is capable of hurling fastballs 95 mph and breaking off big, overhand curves, but control problems got the 21-year-old right-hander demoted from Anaheim to triple-A Salt Lake on Aug. 18, and they doomed him again Friday night.

Though he allowed a single to Danny Valencia and doubles to Rene Tosoni and Luke Hughes to open the fourth, Chatwood was one out away from escaping a runner-on-third, one-out jam and holding the Twins’ lead to 3-2 lead when he lost the strike zone.

Chatwood walked Ben Revere and Trevor Plouffe, who had hit a solo home run in the first inning, to load the bases. Then he walked Jason Kubel on four pitches to force in a run and force Scioscia to make a pitching change.

On came Jerome Williams, who gave up a run-scoring infield single to Michael Cuddyer and a bases-loaded walk to Valencia that gave Minnesota a 6-2 lead.

Shortstop Erick Aybar’s diving catch of Tosoni’s soft line drive ended an inning in which the Twins sent 11 men to the plate.

Chatwood has now walked 65 and struck out 69 in 1281/3 innings this season. Combined with Santana’s seven on Thursday, it was the most walks allowed by Angels starters in consecutive games since John Lackey (five) and Santana (eight) walked 13 on July 19-20, 2006.

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mike.digiovanna@latimes.com