Offense kicks up a notch

Six weeks ago, when the Angels scored all of six runs during a six-game losing streak, they wondered how they would ever survive for four months without Juan Rivera, who hit .310 with 23 home runs and 85 runs batted in last season but broke his leg in a winter-league game in late December.

The way the Angels are hitting now, the question is: If Rivera does return in late July, as expected, how are the Angels ever going to squeeze his potent bat into their suddenly stacked lineup?

A team that is supposed to be offensively challenged set a season high for hits Monday night ... by the sixth inning. A team that supposedly lacks power crushed a season-high four home runs, giving the Angels 10 homers in the last seven games.

It all added up to a 16-3 blowout of the Minnesota Twins, a game in which the Angels pounded out 23 hits, including home runs by Casey Kotchman, Mike Napoli, Gary Matthews Jr., and Garret Anderson, to win for the 15th time in 19 games and the 20th time in 26 games. It raised the Angels’ batting average five points in only one night, from .274 to .279.

Jered Weaver, showing no ill effects of the lower-back stiffness that slowed him in his last start, breezed through seven innings, allowing one run and five hits and striking out four, to improve to 5-3 and help the Angels improve to 37-22, the best 59-game start in franchise history.

Matthews and third baseman Chone Figgins backed Weaver with superb plays, Figgins snaring Torii Hunter’s one-hop smash while falling backward in the third inning and Matthews gunning down Luis Rodriguez trying to stretch a single into a double in the fourth.

But pitching and defense weren’t the headliners in Angel Stadium, not when the Angels had their most hits since May 10, 2002, when they banged out 24 hits in a 19-0 victory over the Chicago White Sox, and came within three hits of the franchise record of 26, set Aug. 25, 1979, at Toronto and June 20, 1980, at Boston.

“We’ve really been consistent for the last month on offense,” Manager Mike Scioscia said, “but tonight, the hits kept falling in, and we drove the ball. It was one of those nights when everything was clicking.”

The Angels sent 12 men to the plate in the eighth inning and scored eight runs on seven hits, including Matthews’ third career grand slam, which followed an intentional walk to Vladimir Guerrero.

Anderson followed with his first homer since being activated Sunday after a five-week absence because of a hip injury.

The Angels sent 10 batters to the plate in the sixth inning and scored five runs on six hits, including Kotchman’s solo shot to right on a 3-and-0 pitch from starter Boof Bonser and Napoli’s two-run shot to left.

“I thought it was going to be a pitchers duel -- the first four or five innings, it was a battle,” Weaver said. “It was refreshing to come out in the sixth with a [comfortable] lead.”

Matthews had four hits and tied a career-high with five RBIs, Orlando Cabrera tied a career high with four hits and had four runs and two runs batted in, Guerrero had three hits and reached base five times, and Napoli had three hits.

But 13 of the Angels’ runs and 14 hits came from the sixth inning on. The Angels had a 3-1 lead after five innings, and it appeared plays on which Guerrero got thrown out at third base in the first inning and at home in the fourth, both by Twins right fielder Michael Cuddyer, might haunt them.

“If there’s any such thing as a game like this being closer than the score indicates, this was it,” Scioscia said. “We had a couple runners cut down in a close game. They played great defense, and those runners could have made a difference. But that turned out to be water under the bridge.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com