you want to, I feel like that’s when you get put to the test. We chose to do it early. We’ll practice what we preach and get after it on Saturday.”

It was an embarrassing start to the season in the same place where the Angels suffered an embarrassing sweep last September. The Angels lost all three against a White Sox team that set a major league record with 121 losses.

The good news for the Angels on Thursday was that left-hander Yusei Kikuchi had a quality start, and it would have been even better if a two-out blooper hadn’t dropped to push home two of the three runs he allowed.

The bad news was just about everything else, mostly the performance of the lineup.

In the first two innings, the Angels had five at-bats with runners in scoring position, and they came up empty. After that, they didn’t get another runner on base until the eighth.

“With the guys we’ve got in that lineup, I think a lot is going to happen before this year is over,” manager Ron Washington said. “You always want to try to win your first one, but it just didn’t happen today. But we put ourselves in position to at least put some runs on the board. And if we keep putting ourselves in position to put runs on the board, I feel like we’re going to do some good things.”

The offensive performance would be a little easier to dismiss if they hadn’t looked anemic for most of spring training, when runs are typically abundant. The Angels hit just .232 with a .692 OPS in spring training. Those were both the worst of all the teams that trained in normally hitter-friendly Arizona.

“I’m not concerned yet,” Washington said. “Spring training is spring training.”

The Angels trailed 3-0 in the eighth when they had a great opportunity to get back in the game. Mike Trout was up representing the tying run, and he worked a nine-pitch walk to load the bases. That brought up Jorge Soler. He fell behind 0-and-2, worked the count full, and then struck out swinging at a pitch out of the strike zone.

By the time the Angels got up in the ninth, their three-run deficit had ballooned to an eight-run deficit because of five runs allowed by rookie right-hander Ryan Johnson.

Johnson, 22, became just the 24th player in major league history to go from the draft to the majors without playing a minor league game. Johnson didn’t pitch in the minors last summer because of his workload in college.

He pitched a perfect seventh inning on 11 pitches, but in the eighth he gave up a three-run homer and a two-run homer.

“I thought he did a real good job in his first inning, and I also thought he was just one pitch away in his second inning of work,” Washington said. “He got a few balls up and they didn’t miss them. That’s what happens.”

O’Hoppe said it was his fault for calling a fastball on Andrew Benintendi’s three-run homer.

“That was the wrong pitch in that spot,” O’Hoppe said.