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Angels get swept in the Bronx

Angels outfielder Mike Trout, right, steals third base as Yankees third baseman Chase Headley attempts to tag him out in the fourth inning.
(Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
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All of them silent, the Angels dressed themselves, shoveled in their dinners, loaded their suitcases, signed their checks for the Yankee Stadium clubhouse attendants, and boarded a bus.

If all went according to plan, they’d land at LAX after 2 a.m. PDT, bus back to Orange County, drive home, and then show up to Angel Stadium 10 hours later to play another ballgame.

It is a particularly grueling part of the Major League Baseball schedule that the Angels are occupying now, made worse by their abject struggles during a four-game series against the New York Yankees and, of course, the fact that this season’s result already seems rendered. They lost four straight in the Bronx, including by a 6-3 decision Thursday night.

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Jhoulys Chacin pitched wonderfully for four innings and then terribly for one inning, the fifth. That determined the game’s outcome. He walked leadoff man Didi Gregorius, then lamented it later. With one out, Chris Parmelee, a heretofore anonymous man who dominated the Angels this series, singled through to left field to knot the score,1-1.

Jacoby Ellsbury singled, Brett Gardner walked, Angels pitching coach Charles Nagy visited the mound, Carlos Beltran doubled, Alex Rodriguez hit a sacrifice fly, and Brian McCann doubled. The Yankees had five runs in a dozen minutes; Chacin did not have his release point, varying wildly within his normal delivery.

He stayed in to start the sixth inning before the Angels turned to their taxed bullpen.

Closer Huston Street handled the eighth even though the score was the opposite of a save situation.

Both teams scored in the seventh inning, but by then it didn’t matter. The Yankees’ starter, right-hander Ivan Nova, had mostly stymied the Angels’ offense since the start.

“If he has sinker and his curveball, he’s going to have success,” Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said of Nova before the game.

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He did, and he did. The Angels did not notch their first hit until the third inning. In the fourth, Mike Trout doubled, stole third, and scored when C.J. Cron singled through a Yankees infield that had been drawn in.

The Angels are 11 games behind Texas, the American League West Division leader. They are on pace to lose 92 times, more than all but six major league teams. The industry consensus is that half of those teams did not open this season trying to win.

To win even 90 games and plausibly contend for a playoff spot, the Angels would have to win at a .627 clip from here forward, almost 200 points better than their winning percentage until now.

They are hurt, they are winded, and they have to keep playing. Reinforcements are not going to arrive. As Manager Mike Scioscia has said several times in recent days, they have exhausted the depth that arrived at spring training. Thirty-nine men have already appeared as Angels in the 67 days since the season began.

“We put a lot of focus on the rotation and the bullpen the last month because of some of the guys that are out,” Scioscia said. “We’re trying to shuffle some things. For a while they were doing a good job. Things have definitely unraveled this series.”

Still, he insisted, the situation is not dire.

“The team that’s left,” he said, “is a pretty good team.”

pedro.moura@latimes.com

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Follow Pedro Moura on Twitter: @PedroMoura

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