Rookie Trout shines again as Angels dump Jays

Los Angeles has won 25 of last 33 games

TORONTO • In their search for missing pieces, the Los Angeles Angels added slugger Albert Pujols, starter C.J. Wilson and closer Ernesto Frieri. But their season took off on the day they decided it was time to add Mike Trout.

He is 20 years old. He leads the American League in batting average and stolen bases. He makes circus catches in the outfield and whoops and hollers afterward. And since the Angels brought him up from the minors on April 28, no team in baseball has a better record.

Trout and the Angels continued their rampage Thursday night in a 9-7 win over the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre. The score was close only because of a magnificent three-run homer by Jose Bautista, but that aside, the proceedings underscored the stark differences between excellence and mediocrity.

Trout’s two-run homer snapped a 6-6 tie and broke the improbable spell Brett Cecil had cast over opponents in his two previous starts. Pujols had two doubles and two singles. The Angels amassed 14 hits but also executed two sacrifice bunts that set up runs.

The Angels have won 25 of 33 and 14 of their past 15 games on the road. Since the day Trout came aboard, they are 37-19.

“It’s a very complete team — power, speed, starting pitching, relieving,” Toronto manager John Farrell said. “They’re clicking right now.”

His Blue Jays are not, but Bautista certainly is. Toronto trailed 5-3 in the fifth when he hit Dan Haren fastball into the second deck above left field. It gave the Jays a brief 6-5 lead.

The homer was Bautista’s 14th this month, the most any Blue Jay has ever hit in any month. He leads the majors with 26 homers, and has 29 RBIs so far in June.

After the Angels tied the score in the sixth, Trout restored their lead with his eighth homer. That ended a rocky night for Cecil, who had pitched to a 2.45 ERA in two starts after the Jays called him up from Las Vegas in the midst of a series of injuries to their starting pitchers.

Cecil’s ERA rose to 6.06 after he allowed eight runs on 10 hits in 5¹/³ innings.

Mixing his pitches well over the first three innings, Cecil confined the Angels to two hits and held a 2-1 lead. But he staggered through eight batters in the three-run fourth.

Before the game, Farrell praised Cecil for using his 2½ months in the minors to relax, stop worrying about his fastball velocity and concentrate on pitching smarter.

“He got away from the pressures of the major-league environment and competing to land a job in spring training — just to go out and pitch and become more consistent,” Farrell said.

“As he’s done that, he’s been able to take that same game that he pitched in either New Hampshire or [Las] Vegas and brought it here, and applied it, and it’s worked.”

It did not work against the Angels. They hit three high fastballs for homers that accounted for five runs.

When things got tight in the eighth, manager Mike Scioscia summoned Frieri, who has not allowed a run since coming to the Angels in a May 3 trade.

Frieri loaded the bases in the ninth, but Edwin Encarnacion bounced into a gameending double play.