Angels 7, White Sox 2: Floyd can't finish

After Jake Peavy's first bad start of the season, it was time for Gavin Floyd to regress to the mean. Unlike Peavy, he didn't lose a large lead. Instead, he lost a small lead, and then lost a lot of battles that turned into a large deficit.

The Sox gave Floyd a 2-1 lead in the third inning, and Floyd blew it over the course of three batters. He got ahead 0-2 on Mike Trout, who singled. Alberto Callaspo singled him to third. And after a first-pitch strike to Albert Pujols, he hung a slider that Pujols sent over the center field wall, giving Pujols his second homer of the year and an Angels a 4-2 lead.

Floyd let the Angels off the hook all night. He threw 67 of 97 pitches for strikes, and walked only one batter over his six innings. He also threw first-pitch strikes to 21 of 27 batters, which is great.

The problem was, some of those strikes were very hittable ones while ahead in the count (per 3E8, he allowed seven of his 10 hits with two strikes). Sometimes he couldn't get to two strikes. Vernon Wells, also struggling, sealed the deal in the sixth inning with a two-run homer on a first-pitch fastball. So while the Angels snapped out of their funk in their first game with a new hitting coach, Floyd helped them out with some poorly timed pitches. Then again, the Angels have to hit those mistakes.

The White Sox offense couldn't string together hits in the same way against Angels starter Jerome Williams. There were individual bright spots -- Dayan Viciedo hit a solo shot, part of a three-hit day. Paul Konerko also racked up three hits, all singles with a variety of swings. Gordon Beckham delivered a big two-out double that scored Alejandro De Aza from first and gave the Sox the briefest of leads.

But any momentum was stunted by holes in the lineup elsewhere. Adam Dunn, Alex Rios, Alexei Ramirez and Brent Morel all wore the collar. Morel looked especially lost, grounding into a double play and striking out twice. He ended the game with a backwards K.

Bullet points:

• Viciedo also racked up an outfield assist for the second straight game, gunning down Mike Trout at second.
• A.J. Pierzynski threw out Howie Kendrick at second (he looked safe).
• Jesse Crain, pitching for the first time in nearly a month, threw a scoreless inning and picked off Trout.
• Peter Bourjos tried a rough-and-tumble takeout slide on Gordon Beckham in the eighth. Literally -- he slide into the bag, tumbled over it and tried rolling over Beckham's leg. Beckham completed the double play.

Record: 17-21 | Box score | Play-by-play