Angels Getting a Little Sloppy

An Angel team that a few days ago appeared to be steaming toward the All-Star break with a boatload of momentum has begun to look like a team in desperate need of three days off.

Suffering uncharacteristic breakdowns in the rotation and bullpen and some rare lapses on defense, the Angels lost to the Seattle Mariners, 10-4, before an announced 43,853 in Angel Stadium Friday night, the Angels’ second consecutive lopsided defeat to the American League West’s last-place team.

Left-hander Jarrod Washburn, who entered with the league’s fourth-best earned-run average (3.06), was roughed up for four runs and nine hits in 5 1/3 innings, one night after ace Bartolo Colon gave up seven runs in six innings of a 10-2 loss.

Reliever Joel Peralta, who induced an inning-ending, fly-ball out with the bases loaded against Minnesota on Wednesday to earn his first major league victory, had no such luck in the same situation Friday night, giving up a grand slam to Seattle left fielder Randy Winn in the sixth inning.

And first baseman Darin Erstad and second baseman Adam Kennedy, who have played Gold Glove-caliber defense all season, committed throwing errors in the eighth to help the Mariners score an insurance run, as the Angels’ division lead over Texas fell to seven games.

“We take it day by day here, and the last two days have not been good,” Erstad said. “But we’ve been a resilient team all along, and we’ve just got to grind it out, get through something like this and find a way to stop it.”

Playing integral roles in Seattle’s win were 42-year-old pitcher Jamie Moyer and 42-year-old catcher Pat Borders.

Moyer, mixing his usual array of pitches that go from soft to softer to softest, shut out the Angels for five innings, and Borders keyed fifth- and sixth-inning rallies with doubles, as the Mariners, who rank last in the league in batting average and runs, pounded out 15 hits.

“It’s awfully surprising Seattle is not hitting the ball,” Washburn said. “Their first five hitters match up with anyone. They’ve been cold, but they’re too good a lineup for that to last. Too bad they got hot against us.”

Since Washburn’s rain-shortened, five-inning, complete-game shutout of Kansas City on Sunday night, an Angel rotation that ranks second in the league with a 3.79 ERA has given up 22 earned runs in 28 2/3 innings of five starts for a 6.91 ERA.

“With the pitching staff we have, we’ll be all right; we’re not going to go into long slumps,” Washburn said. “We’ve had a few bad starts in a row, but I don’t think that will be a pattern.”

The Mariners, leading 2-0, blew the game open with a five-run sixth.

Willie Bloomquist walked, and when Jose Lopez smacked Washburn’s 108th pitch of the game for a one-out single, Manager Mike Scioscia summoned Peralta, the right-hander, to face Borders.

Borders hit a grounder that third baseman Chone Figgins couldn’t back-hand near the bag, and the ball rolled into left for an RBI double and a 3-0 lead. Peralta walked Ichiro Suzuki intentionally to load the bases but grooved a fastball to Winn, who pounded it into the right-field seats for his fifth career grand slam and a 7-0 lead.

The Angels, who managed three singles off Moyer in the first five innings, bunched three hits in the sixth -- Figgins’ single, Vladimir Guerrero’s double and Bengie Molina’s three-run home run -- to make it 7-3, and Jeff DaVanon’s first homer of the year made it 7-4 in the seventh.

But with two on and Guerrero representing the tying run, Mariner reliever Jeff Nelson retired the 2004 AL most valuable player on a fly to right, ending the seventh.

Erstad, after fielding Jake Woods’ low pickoff throw in the eighth, threw wildly for his first error of the season, allowing Suzuki to take third, and Suzuki scored as Kennedy’s throw on Raul Ibanez’s grounder sailed over the catcher’s head.

Suzuki’s two-out, two-run single in the ninth off reliever Kevin Gregg made it 10-4, and the Angels were over and out.