Angels are sloppy in the slop, lose to Oakland, 14-0

Reporting from Oakland — The Angel clubhouse couldn’t get much quieter than it was Tuesday.

And outfielder Torii Hunter hopes his team’s play can’t get much worse than it was Tuesday in a 14-0 loss to the Oakland Athletics.

“When you’re at the bottom all you can do is rise up,” Hunter said. “What we have to do is just try to bounce back. Can it get any worse? Nope.”

Well, maybe.

Because while Tuesday’s rout was the fifth loss in six games for the Angels, it came in such embarrassing fashion even the final score — bad as it was — didn’t tell the story.

Just three Angels reached base and the team had just one hit entering the ninth. On the other side, the A’s sent at least eight men to the plate in three separate innings, pounding out 15 hits against five Angel pitchers.

The only way to deal with such a complete shellacking, Manager Mike Scioscia said afterward, was by forgetting it.

Quickly.

“Turn the page and move on,” he said. “Right now we’ve got to get that one good at-bat, that focus on the offensive side. And play a better all-around game.

“We have a club that’s a little unsettled right now.”

That’s not a good sign considering the season is a quarter of the way over.

Yet if this contest had been a prize fight ? or a high school game ? they would have stopped it early. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, so the Angels had to sit through the rain and a bitter chill and play on to the finish.

Not that they had much to play for after the first few innings.

They didn’t get their first hit until Howie Kendrick singled to leadoff the fifth against Oakland starter Gio Gonzalez, who was magnificent in his seven innings, allowing just the single and a walk, striking out seven and facing just one batter over the minimum.

Littered in his wake were the remains of a lineup that entered the game second in the American League in batting. Peter Bourjos went 0 for 3, running his hitless streak to 20 at-bats and dropping his average to .167 this month. Alberto Callaspo went 0 for 3, ending his season-long eight-game hitting streak. And Mark Trumbo went 0 for 3 and is hitting .120 over his past eight games.

Jeff Mathis finally got the Angels second hit Tuesday leading off the ninth against reliever Trystan Magnuson, who was making his major league debut. By then the outcome was no longer in doubt. In fact, it really wasn’t in doubt after the third inning, when Oakland led 7-0. After that the A’s biggest concern wasn’t the Angels as much as it was the weather, with the rain that delayed the start of the game 42 minutes returning with a vengeance.

The umpires elected to play on, however, and by the fourth inning the skies had cleared.

Angels starter Tyler Chatwood was long gone by then, lasting just 2 1/3 innings, the shortest outing of his rookie season. Before he left, the A’s battered him for seven soggy runs (five earned) and seven hits. That matched the number of runs he gave in his last three starts and 18 1/3 innings combined.

When it was finally over the Angels were left with few options, the best of which, as Scioscia said, was moving on.

“This is one of those games you have to throw out the window,” Hunter said. “You can’t think about it. We lost. We got beat. It’s kind of easy to get over it when you lose like this.

“We just couldn’t do nothing.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com