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It was a down, then up last seven days for the Angels as they inched ever closer to .500. The pitching staff has been very impressive lately, albeit against some of the more offensively-challenged teams in the league. The Angels allowed a total of 11 runs since last Friday and allowed no more than three runs in any of those games. A big part of the bullpen’s turnaround can be credited to a pitcher that wasn’t on the team on Opening Day.

FRIERI LITERALLY UNHITTABLE

When the Angels acquired Ernesto Frieri on May 3 for minor leaguers Donn Roach and Alexi Amarista they never could have expected him to be this dominant. He was a solid reliever for San Diego with an ERA in the low twos and a good strikeout rate. Since making his Angels debut two days after the trade, Frieri has pitched 8 2/3 innings and has not allowed a hit. Of the 26 outs he’s recorded as an Angel, only seven of them were put in play.

Frieri has been extremely tough on left-handed hitters. He’s faced 18 of them since the trade – five walked and twelve struck out. The only lefty to put a ball in play against him since he joined the Halos was his former teammate Chase Headley, who popped out to short.

DID FIRING HATCHER FIX THE MACHINE?

It’s only been a week and a half since Mickey Hatcher was fired as the Angels hitting coach, so it’s probably a bit early to crunch numbers to see if the team has improved. But I was curious and ran the numbers anyway. In nine games under Jim Eppard, the team’s batting average and runs per game is actually down a bit (BA down .015, Runs PG down 0.2).

However, as scripted, Albert Pujols is suddenly once again Albert Pujols. With Hatcher as the hitting coach, he was in the bottom 10 among qualifiers in slugging at .288. Since the firing, Pujols is slugging .639 – which is in line with his career numbers.

SANTANA SLIDING BACK INTO FORM

Ervin Santana gets the start today looking to continue his string of solid starts since the calendar turned May. Run support was certainly an issue in Santana’s 0-5 record in April, but a 6.16 ERA and 10 home runs allowed is awful any way you slice it. In May Santana has been much better, striking out 26 in 29 innings. A big reason for his success lately has been his slider. Opposing hitters are just 5-for-39 with 18 strikeouts in at-bats ending in a Santana slider this month.

Two key veterans re-established themselves with dominant games during the Angels’ 3-0 win over the Seattle Mariners on Thursday night at Safeco Field.

Dan Haren pitched a four-hit shutout and Albert Pujols had three hits, including his 450^th career home run.

The Good:

Clicking. Pujols has started so slowly, Angels fans haven’t yet gotten to appreciate his place in this game. But you get a notion of his brilliant career when you consider he is the fourth-fastest player ever to reach the 450-home run milestone. And only two of the players ahead of him, Ken Griffey Jr and Jimmie Foxx were never linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps now Pujols will get on with piling up milestones and enhancing the Angels’ brand as he goes.

Haren wins. These were unfamiliar days for Haren, who for seven years has been one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball. Going into late May stuck on one win? His record was largely the product of paltry run support, but he was also a tick off his former level. It all came back to him Thursday night and it looked as if the Mariners never stood a chance. Haren set a new career high with 14 strikeouts and got his first win in nearly a month.

Morales moves. Lost in the constant noise of Pujols’ struggles was the inability of Kendrys Morales to drive the ball recently. He nearly snapped his two-week long homerless drought with a deep drive in the first inning, but the wind knocked it down. He had two key hits and, in tandem with Pujols, could be the key to this offense.

The Bad:

Young guns misfiring. Mark Trumbo and Mike Trout were so hot for a while, it seemed as if it would go on forever. But baseball is a hard game and the two young players have now cooled off together. Trout had the only hit between them and combined they are four for their last 35.

Roll interrupted. Just when it looked as if Erick Aybar was about to get hot, he got hit in the knee with a pitch, missed a game and saw his hot streak interrupted. After a torrid 8-for-15 stretch, Aybar has two hits in his last 11 at-bats.

Run support. If you’re wondering why Haren hadn’t won a game since April 28, consider that the Angels had given him two runs of support, total, in his previous four starts. Pujols gave him that with one swing of the bat.

The Angels finally managed to win one of these low-scoring nail biters, a skill they may have to perfect if there's to be any hope for this season.

Alberto Callaspo doubled into the left-field corner in the 11th inning to drive in two runs as the Angels beat the Oakland A's 3-1 Wednesday at Network Associates Coliseum. The Angels improved to 4-9 in one-run games.

The Good:

Weaver cruises. This is what it's like to pitch for the Angels this season. Jered Weaver made one mistake -- he hung a changeup in the middle of the plate to Seth Smith -- and it meant he wouldn't be the first AL pitcher to seven wins. Weaver absolutely dominated Oakland for eight innings, but -- as Ervin Santana and Dan Haren could have told him -- it's not easy pitching for this offense.

Rookie moment. Kole Calhoun slashed a double to left field and Angels first-base coach Alfredo Griffin made a point of asking the A's for the ball. It was Calhoun's first major-league hit. Things have happened quickly for the former eighth-round pick out of Arizona State. Calhoun forced his way onto the Angels' prospect watch by hitting .324 at Single-A last season and he spent only 43 games at Triple-A before injuries prompted the Angels to call him up. How far will this story go?

Bullpen dominates. Between the addition of Ernesto Frieri, who picked up his first save, the rebound of Jordan Walden and the steadiness of Scott Downs, the back end of the Angels' bullpen suddenly looks bankable for the first time. Those three managed to take over for Weaver without letting Oakland's offense get any hope of awakening. Frieri throws 93 mph, but it looks like he is throwing 100 because of lateral movement. He has struck out 19 batters in 8 2/3 innings as an Angel. Not even Francisco Rodriguez when he first arrived could match that pace.

The Bad:

Missing, inaction. Howie Kendrick has apparently altered his approach in the last couple of seasons, sacrificing some contact for power. His strikeouts surged in tandem with his home run total last season, but so far this season the former is out-pacing the latter. Kendrick has already struck out 40 times, putting him on pace for more than 150. For a guy who has never hit 20 home runs in a season, that would be way too high.

Running nowhere. It is a part of Albert Pujols' game that fits in easily around a Mike Scioscia team: aggressive base running. But when you try to catalyze an offense by taking ridiculous risks, you only exacerbate the problem. Pujols decided to try for third on Kendrys Morales' single to center field in the sixth inning and was out easily. When you give a team outs on the bases, especially easy ones, you're only speeding up the game clock on yourself.

Cooling off. For a supposedly veteran team, the Angels have been uncommonly reliant on two young players lately. And, now that Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo have cooled off, the offense has practically ground to a standstill. Trout and Trumbo have combined for three hits in their past 27 at-bats.

Albert Pujols told reporters Tuesday that his struggles this season largely have been the result of being overaggressive, of swinging at too many pitches out of the strike zone.

"Forty thousand people watching at the stadium could see that. People watching on TV could see that," he said. "I'm not doing that right now. I'm just putting good swings on it. Whenever it clicks, it clicks. Sometimes it takes awhile."

What appears to be happening -- even if it's in slow motion -- is that Pujols is easing back into a comfort zone, or at least the first stages of a comfort zone. In his first 27 games as an Angel, he batted .194 with zero home runs and five RBIs. In his last 16 games, he has batted .242 with four home runs and 15 RBIs. The batting average tells us he's still not the old Pujols, but the rest of his numbers suggest he's at least learning how to imitate him.

To his point, interestingly, we haven't seen his emphasis on patience translate into walks. He has just four of those in this 16-game stretch, about half his typical walk rate.

But here's how we know he still has plenty of time to obscure those memories of an ugly April and early May. If Pujols does what he did last year from this point forward, he will bat .282 with 34 home runs and 94 RBIs. Those numbers may not touch his MVP years, but they might be good enough to steer this season back where the Angels once thought it was headed.

The Angels got a dominating pitching performance from C.J. Wilson and saw some signs of life from Albert Pujols' bat in a 5-0 win over the Oakland A's Tuesday night.

The Good:

Mr. Steady. Other than a rain-shortened outing in Texas and his previous start -- when he was battling a stomach virus -- C.J. Wilson hasn't had a bad start all year. Tuesday, against the punchless A's, was one of his finest -- an eight-inning one-hitter. The jury is still out on the Angels' two marquee off-season acquisitions, but the Wilson investment looks a lot more sound so far than the Albert Pujols deal.

Albert. He hit his first home run on the road and also had a sacrifice fly. Every time you make grandiose statements about Pujols getting hot, he cools off again, so we'll refrain from that. But four home runs nearing the end of May sounds a lot better than zero going into early May. He's at least taking baby steps.

Pushing buttons. This has been a grueling couple of months for manager Mike Scioscia. His close friend, hitting coach Mickey Hatcher, got fired. Scioscia has taken more criticism than ever before. But Tuesday he seemed to set the right tone by giving Angels hitters a day off from on-field batting practice, something he calls "going American Legion." Maybe it helped alleviate a little pressure? Also, Scioscia seems, at last, to have settled on a more or less set lineup, with Mike Trout leading off, one of the switch-hitting third basemen batting second and either Kendrys Morales or Mark Trumbo at cleanup.

The Bad:

Aybar exits. Shortstop Erick Aybar took a breaking ball off the right knee and had to leave the game in the seventh inning. Aybar hasn't exactly been killing the ball at the plate, but if he's out for more than a couple of days, it could put a big dent in the Angels' defensive continuity. Also, the infield options in the minor-leagues are scant since the team sent Alexi Amarista to San Diego.

Maicer struggles. Maicer Izturis has been one of the more underrated players on the roster as long as he's been an Angel, and that's a long time (he's the longest-serving player on the roster, having been acquired from Montreal in 2004). The utility guy, however, has been in a mighty slump lately, just one hit in his last 19 at-bats. He had a rare 0-for-6 Sunday in San Diego and he followed that with Tuesday's 1-for-5 performance.

AL West hitting. Leave Texas out of the discussion and the offensive performance of the AL West is just staggeringly anemic. Wilson was good Tuesday, but was he this good? Oakland entered Tuesday night with a .216 team batting average. That's incredible.

The Angels can fail to score with the best of them.

After losing a series against the San Diego Padres, who have scored the second-fewest runs in baseball, the Angels traveled to play the team with the worst batting average in baseball. They lost again, this time to the Oakland A's by a score of 2-1.

The Angels' offense, well-hyped after an active winter, has scored more than two runs just once in the past five games.

The Good:

Mr. Solid. The decision to give Jerome Williams the final spot in the Angels' rotation is looking smarter by the week. Williams has been about as solid as a No. 5 starter can be lately. His ERA this month is under 3.00 and he has pitched at least into the seventh inning in every start this season other than his first in New York.

The 'pen is mighter than... we thought? The most-maligned part of the team -- fortified by the addition of hard-throwing Ernesto Frieri and by improved performances -- has given up just three earned runs in the past 23 innings. So, they've got that going for them, at least for now.

Trojan horse. OK, we've exhausted positive Angels news, so perhaps we should turn our praise to a Southern California native elsewhere. Tommy Milone, a Saugus native and ex-USC Trojan, has pitched brilliantly at the Oakland Coliseum and -- in 14 major-league starts -- has a 3.98 ERA. The A's acquired him from the Washington Nationals in the Gio Gonzalez trade and it looks like he could be a keeper.

The Bad:

Missing piece. With Vernon Wells out for at least the next two months after having surgery on his right thumb, Peter Bourjos is in for more playing time. That's good news when the Angels are in the field, but questionable news when they're hitting. The team needs Bourjos -- along with most of the other hitters -- to shake out of his early funk. Bourjos has been hovering around .200 most of the season.

Atrophy. Before Monday, Kendrys Morales had batted just 16 times against left-handed pitchers (and gotten three hits). It's no wonder he's a bit rusty from the right side. Morales went 0-for-4 Monday in a surprise start against the lefty and you wonder if it will be another month before Mike Scioscia gives him that chance again. If you're going to call this guy a switch-hitter, why not give him a chance to actually switch hit?

End game. It seems like a small thing, but the Angels have gotten virtually no offense from their catchers since Chris Iannetta got knocked out by a wrist injury. Bobby Wilson has one hit in his last 22 at-bats. With holes elsewhere in the lineup, the lack of production near the bottom of the order has become a bigger concern. It sounds a lot like last year, frankly.

We all knew there was a good chance the Angels would one day have an outfield of Mike Trout, Peter Bourjos and Mark Trumbo. We just didn't expect that day to be May 21, 2012.

This team's outfield has gone from having a glut of available players to being devoid of healthy, present bodies. Vernon Wells is out 8-10 weeks after thumb surgery. Torii Hunter remains on the restricted list while he deals with sexual-assault charges against his son, Darius, back in Texas. Bobby Abreu is batting .341 for the Dodgers.

And, at least for the moment, the rapid attrition seems to be roughly Reason No. 94 to worry about this team. It's miles behind Albert Pujols' slump, furlongs back of the bullpen's struggles and probably even stuck behind the Chris Iannetta injury and the lack of catching depth.

In fact, is it wrong to suggest this could actually help this team win some more games in the next few weeks? Bourjos is the best defensive outfielder in the organization, Trumbo's bat the most dangerous on the team for now and Trout perhaps a burgeoning superstar. Angels fans have been clamoring for this look since spring training and it's hard to fault them. If anything, it's the veterans who have held the Angels back, not the young players.

In 640 at-bats as an Angel, Wells is batting .223 with a .255 on-base percentage and 78 RBIs. Trout figures to be just as steady in the outfield and his performance the past three weeks suggest he's a massive upgrade offensively. Before Hunter left, he was doing his usual thing, producing steadily at the plate, playing Gold Glove-caliber outfield and holding the clubhouse together. But Trumbo has far more power, an equally strong arm and -- you have to say it -- won't have as much off-field stuff to worry about.

The center-field situation isn't quite as easy to shrug off, because Bourjos (.203) hasn't produced much with his bat. But over the same sample-size as Wells', all of Bourjos' offensive numbers are better, aside from power, and he can make nearly as much impact on the defensive side as Erick Aybar, another struggling hitter, can make from the shortstop position.

Time will tell how long this trio stays together -- and manager Mike Scioscia told reporters in San Diego he expects Hunter back by the end of the weekend -- but for now, it may be the most interesting thing this team has going for it. And, besides, who doesn't like a glimpse into the future?

The Angels looked for a while like they had reached a stalemate of offensive ineptitude, but finally someone managed to score.

The result was a 3-2 loss to the San Diego Padres in 13 innings, another stark example of the Angels' poor hitting, which hasn't abated since the firing of hitting coach Mickey Hatcher. Howie Kendrick bobbled a ball in left field, allowing Clayton Richard to score the winning run.

The Good:

Fast swimmer. It's impossible to avoid fish imagery when writing about Mike Trout. Sorry, that's just the way it is, so get used to it. The Angels' best prospect -- along with Mark Trumbo -- are keeping this team afloat, at least to the extent it's staying afloat. Trout mashed a home run to left-center and was 3-for-4, on base five times.

The aforementioned. Trumbo looks like a different guy. Specifically, he looks like a young Manny Ramirez. He's hitting line drives all over the place and, when he's not absolutely killing a baseball, he's getting on base via the base on balls. Trumbo's newfound patience has made him a far more complete player. 0p0l-p0---kjt

Pitching depth. The Padres are such an inept offensive team, it's hard to judge pitching performances. But Ervin Santana continued to slowly pull his season out of the muck and the bullpen was as good as you can be. Youngster David Carpenter deserves special mention for escaping an almost inescapable jam (winning run on third, one out) and pitching 2 1/3 scoreless innings.

The Bad:

K-Company. If the Angels are going to leave Howie Kendrick in the middle of the order, they're going to need him to produce at a far higher level with runners on base. Entering Sunday, Kendrick was batting .161 with runners in scoring position and .196 with runners on in general. With the bases loaded and one out in the 10th inning, Kendrick struck out swinging.

Sixth street. Maicer Izturis went 0 for 6 and stranded six runners. Need we go on?

Not so hot. When Albert Pujols hit home runs in back-to-back games late last week, it looked like he was about to go on one of his hot streaks, the kind that could carry the team. It hasn't happened. Pujols fell into a familiar pattern Sunday and had a 2-for-12, zero-RBI weekend in San Diego.

The Angels, searching for some offensive continuity, hit another cold patch in a 3-2 loss to the last-place San Diego Padres.

The Good:

Snapping out of it. Erick Aybar had been as cold as cold can be, but his bat has come awake in a big way the past two nights. Aybar had four more hits, driving in and scoring a run, and has six already in this weekend series. Aybar's days as a leadoff hitter may be over, but the Angels, especially without catcher Chris Iannetta, could use another active bat near the bottom of their lineup.

Trout's fire. As a rookie, Mike Trout probably shouldn't get into too many spats with umpires. At the same time, he has to play the game with emotion. He nearly beat out the shortstop's throw on his RBI groundout in the fifth inning, then made no secret of his unhappiness with Doug Eddings' call. Eddings, far from a popular figure with Angels fans following a controversial call in the 2005 ALCS, stared him down all the way to the dugout.

Back to form. It's hard to separate the opponent from the performance, but Dan Haren seemed to have crisper stuff Saturday night and that's a good sign for this rotation. Haren gave up three runs, but generally mowed down the punchless Padres through six innings. He also was working in the 90 mph range with his fastball, which seems to be a key mark.

The Bad:

Numbness. The Angels have a tendency to be lulled to sleep for long stretches of games, often against pedestrian pitchers. Soft-tossing lefty Eric Stults, an ex-Dodger, was able to breeze deep into the seventh inning while allowing only four hits. Only two Angels, Aybar and Trout, managed to pick up even one base hit off Stults.

The price. The Angels couldn't be happier with new reliever Ernesto Frieri, who has fortified the wobbly back end of their bullpen. But you don't get something for nothing in this game, and scrappy middle infielder Alexi Amarista, part of a trade for Frieri, looks like he has the heart -- and ability -- to be a big-league player. Amarista (two hits, winning RBI) has gotten off to a strong start with the Padres, who figure to give him a shot at their starting second base job.

Cooling off. Mark Trumbo was practically trailing smoke behind him, he was swinging such a hot bat. Primarily a designated hitter prior to Torii Hunter's recent absence, Trumbo also had established himself well in right field, which just might end up being his position next year and beyond. But Saturday was a bit of a rough patch. He went 0-for-4 with a strikeout, stranded a couple runners and bobbled a ball that let a runner reach third base.

The Angels got back into their comfort zone, the National League.

They beat the San Diego 7-2 Friday night at Petco Park behind another strong pitching effort by Jered Weaver and a strong hitting performance by... Jered Weaver? The Angels have the best interleague record in the majors since 2007.

The Good:

Tropical fish. Mike Trout is doing to the major leagues what he did after adjustment periods to both Double-A and Triple-A. He's making it look easy. The Angels' best under-21 player has had multi-hit games in six of his last nine games. He went 3-for-4, including a triple down the left-field line that drove in a run.

Rare sight. In a few years, Jered Weaver probably won't remember another strong performance on the mound (seven good innings). Those have become commonplace for him, especially in the last few years. What he'll remember is the base hit up the middle off Jeff Suppan, the run he scored and the walk he earned. The Angels have some good-hitting pitchers on their staff, but Weaver probably isn't one of them. Now, however, he might end up leading the staff in on-base percentage this year. Oh yeah, he's also 6-1 with a 2.80 ERA.

Thaws. Howie Kendrick snapped an 0-for-19 streak by lining a single to right field in the ninth inning. Vernon Wells is emerging from a year-and-change worth of slump with some of his best hitting as an Angel in the past two weeks. Erick Aybar snapped out of a month-long funk with a couple of hits. The Angels will be a deep lineup if these guys are productive.

The Bad:

Bobby's bat. Now that Chris Iannetta is on the disabled list after wrist surgery, the Angels could fall back into last season's pattern: the catcher's spot in the lineup as a black hole. Bobby Wilson, the No. 1 catcher in Iannetta's stead, hasn't gotten a hit since last weekend. You've got to figure Angels GM Jerry Dipoto has been working the phones to scrounge up an adequate-hitting catcher.

Seriously, San Diego? The Padres average barely three runs per game, making the Angels' lineup look mighty by comparison. Only the Pittsburgh Pirates have scored fewer runs than San Diego, which scrounged up just three hits Friday night. If things continue, manager Bud Black might find things getting uncomfortable.

Held out. The Angels are playing at a National League Park this weekend, which -- of course -- means no designated hitter. It still seems like every effort should be taken to get the best eight hitters on the field. Kendrys Morales certainly falls into that category, but his weekend figures to boil down to two or three pinch-hitting appearances. Angels manager Mike Scioscia told reporters before the game that Albert Pujols is willing to play a little third base and Morales is healthy enought to play first. OK, so why not do it?

The South American nation of Colombia has sent 10 players to the major leagues. The first six were shortstops. The last three have been pitchers.

"Those shortstops had great hands, because our fields had so many rocks in them," said Angels reliever Ernesto Frieri, the ninth Colombian to reach the majors. "They fixed the fields. Now, no shortstops."

Frieri admits his favorite sport to watch is still soccer, which helps explain why Colombia has been less of a pipeline to the majors than neighboring Venezuela or other Caribbean lands such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba or Puerto Rico, where baseball is the No. 1 sport.

Colombia -- specifically, a small town called Sincerin near the colonial city of Cartagena -- is Frieri's home. But for the past 10 seasons, his home away from home had been the San Diego Padres organization. He was the longest-tenured player in the organization before the Padres traded him to the Angels for infielder Alexi Amarista and pitcher Donn Roach early this month.

The Angels play the Padres in San Diego this weekend and Amarista figures to be on the field quite a bit. He might even face Frieri. San Diego released veteran second baseman Orlando Hudson Thursday, opening a door for Amarista.

Frieri has been a key addition to the Angels bullpen, having made five scoreless appearances, virtually all of them in high-pressure situations. Frieri has become the right-handed complement to closer Scott Downs and pitches almost exclusively in the eighth and ninth innings. His acquisition has brought order to the most chaotic part of the team for the first month.

The move also has benefited Frieri's career. He was working the middle innings for the Padres, whose bullpen is deeper than the Angels'.

"The Angels gave me a chance to pitch in close situations and I love it," Frieri said. "I think every Latin pitcher likes that, because we love adrenaline. We're used to pitching in winter ball in front of all those full crowds, screaming the whole game."

It’s been an interesting last few days for the Angels. They got rid of hitting coach Mickey Hatcher Tuesday and Albert Pujols homered on Wednesday and Thursday.


HITTING LIKE A DEAD-BALL TEAM…

Last season the Angels were shut out 11 times, which was just slightly above average. This season they have been shut out eight times in their first 39 games. The only teams in the Live Ball Era (since 1920) to be shut out more than eight times at this point in the season are the 1984 New York Yankees (10), the 1976 San Francisco Giants (9) and the 1933 Boston Braves (9).

YOUNG GUNS LIGHTING IT UP

On the bright side, Mark Trumbo and Mike Trout are doing their part in ending the offensive hibernation. Trumbo and Trout are hitting .426 and .500 respectively this season in at-bats ending in curveballs, change-ups or sliders. During Trumbo’s current eight-game hitting streak he is 16 for 28, with multi-hit games in four out of the last five.

A LITTLE HELP?

Ervin Santana went five straight starts without a single run of support prior to winning his last two starts. Dan Haren has apparently caught whatever disease it was that Santana had during his losing skid. The Angels haven’t scored in Haren’s last three starts.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last pair of starting pitchers to each have a streak of at least three games in which they received zero run support in a single season was Guillermo Hernandez and Mike Krukow of the 1980 Cubs.

SHORT TRIP DOWN I-5

Jered Weaver will look to bounce back from his horrific start against the Rangers as he opens the Angels’ first interleague series of the year today against the light-hitting Padres. San Diego is last in the majors in slugging percentage (.331) and second-to-last in runs per game (3.2). The last time the Angels faced the Padres was in June of 2009 – a series in which Weaver capped a three-game sweep with a five-hit shutout.

ANAHEIM -- C.J. Wilson took the mound Thursday with a bit of a stomach virus, but the nausea he started feeling wasn’t just the result of a bug.

“It was more about how I was throwing,” Wilson said.

The Angels left-hander walked six batters (plus hit one) in less than four innings and, after a while, the rest of the team seemed to pick up on that sloppiness. The result was a pretty bad all-around game of baseball, but – possibly – more of an aberration than a pattern.

This team appears to be doing things more as it expected – Albert Pujols is hitting home runs again, for example – but days like Thursday come along once in a while, even for good teams. So far, the Angels haven’t been a good team, but Thursday doesn’t prove they’re not one now.

“I didn’t set a good tone,” Wilson said. “It was pretty much my fault. I put the defense to sleep out there and maybe the bats, too.”

The Angels -- specifically, Howie Kendrick and Mike Trout -- lost three catchable balls in the sun, leading directly to two runs that chased Wilson early, but generally defense has been a strength for this team. They were baffled by lanky left-hander Chris Sale, but that’s understandable. They haven’t seen him much and Sale has good stuff, including a heavy, mid-90s fastball.

Despite Thursday’s clunker, you get the impression this team could – could – be ready to take off. It helps that their next three series are against the San Diego Padres, Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariners. The Angels tend to pound the National League, Seattle is playing horribly and Oakland, while fielding a competitive team, is probably the easiest place to play in baseball with its 8,000 fans per night.

If the Angels are going to make a move that can clean up some of that negative energy they generated from five bad weeks, this trip seems like an appropriate time. So, manager Mike Scioscia decided to go to his favorite bibliographic analogy Thursday: turn the page.

“We’re trying to get momentum. When you lose a game because the other team beats you, you tip your cap and hope to get better from it,” Scioscia said. “We just didn’t give ourselves a chance. Overall, we’re moving forward.”

ANAHEIM -- The Angels seemed dazed by the mid-afternoon sun, losing three fly balls in the glare, and C.J. Wilson was wild in a 6-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox Thursday at Angel Stadium.

The Good:

A Force. Mark Trumbo isn't sneaking up on anyone any more. He hit 29 home runs last year, so there are plenty of pitchers who know the damage he can do. He has never been as hot as he is right now. He's batting .460 with seven doubles and three home runs in his last 13 games. At times, he's hitting balls so hard that the fielder catches the carom quickly enough to hold him to a single.

Is he back? Albert Pujols had his first back-to-back games with a home run, but it was where the balls traveled -- to center field -- that has the Angels sensing his long cold streak might be over. Pujols has 13 RBIs in his last 10 games and his swing finally looks healthy again. He did have one hard ground ball to the left side, but he's keeping his weight back longer and looks dangerous again.

Thievery. On a day when the Angels' inability to catch fly balls may have cost them a game, Vernon Wells partially redeemed the defense by robbing Gordon Beckham of a home run in the eighth inning. Wells timed it well, put his right cleats on the fence and climbed it to keep the ball in the park and send Beckham back to the dugout with his hands on his helmet.

The Bad:

Sun guard. Imagine if this team had played back when night games were a rarity. Games might have lasted until it got dark. Mike Trout and Howie Kendrick (twice) lost balls in the sun. Two of them led to a pair of unearned runs that chased Wilson from the game in the fourth inning. Maybe the Angels should play a few more day games to get their players accustomed to the conditions.

Command. The attribute that sets Wilson apart from Jered Weaver and Dan Haren is that he occasionally loses touch with the strike zone. Wilson had generally kept that tendency in check this season, but Thursday it exploded all over him. Wilson walked six batters and hit Alex Rios with a pitch, pretty much guaranteeing it would be a poor outing. It could have been worse, but he got some clutch outs in each of the first three innings.

Starving Albert. As Pujols warms up, it's going to be essential that the top-of-the-order hitters give him opportunities to carry the team for the first time. Trout and Maicer Izturis never got on base, going 0-for-8. So, each time Pujols batted, the bases were empty. If you're going to suffer through Pujols' dry spells, you may as well maximize his hot streaks.

Big-money contract, new team, new fans, a brutally slow start to the season. Then comes the mounting pressure of all of that. If it sounds familiar to Angels fans, it sounds painful to Vernon Wells.

Like Albert Pujols this season, Wells was that guy last year.

"I understand it first-hand," Wells said. "You never want to go through it, but I think it's a blessing if you're able to go through that, come out the other side and learn from it. When things come easily for you, it feels great, but you never master that ability to get through adversity."

Are we seeing Wells beginning to emerge from a slump that endured through six months of 2011 and had crept into the first five weeks of this season? The last nine games, over which he's hitting .303, may have been his most productive stretch as an Angel. He has already hit six home runs, a mark he didn't reach until June 13 last season, when he wound up with 25.

He said he's "getting there," when asked if he's as locked in as at any time with this team. Like Pujols, he is at his best when he's able to use the whole field. Like Pujols, he got pull-happy for most of 2011 and it choked off his ability to do other things. He hit only 15 doubles, less than half a typical season's worth.

"He's a right-handed pull hitter is what he is, but he has the ability to use more of the field than, at times, he's shown throughout his career," manager Mike Scioscia said. "This is something that plagued him in Toronto and, when he's gotten a grasp of it, he's as productive as any hitter in the league."

Here are lineups for Thursday's 12:35 p.m. game against the Chicago White Sox:

White Sox
Alejandro De Aza CF
Gordon Beckham 2B
Adam Dunn 1B
Paul Konerko DH
Alex Rios RF
A.J. Pierzynski C
Alexei Ramirez SS
Dayan Viciedo LF
Brent Morel 3B

Angels
Mike Trout RF
Maicer Izturis SS
Albert Pujols 1B
Mark Trumbo DH
Howie Kendrick 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Alberto Callaspo 3B
Peter Bourjos CF
John Hester C