[0] ANGELS PONDER `ENERGY' CRISIS MINNESOTA 3, ANGELS 0.

Byline: Gordon Verrell Staff Writer

ANAHEIM - A couple hours before the start of Wednesday night's game against the Minnesota Twins, Angels manager Mike Scioscia was going over the ``how comes'' and ``we gotta do whatevers'' but kept coming back to one central theme: offense.

``We're not playing the type of baseball we know we can play,'' Scioscia was saying, ``and we're putting all our energy into getting better, particularly on the offensive side.''

Energy, of course, is in short supply everywhere these days, so it shouldn't come as too big of a shock that the Angels' latest rolling blackout lasted all nine innings.

Young Joe Mays restricted the Angels to just five hits in pitching the Twins to their fourth win in a row, 3-0, before 14,913 at Edison Field.

It's the fourth time the Angels have been shut out this year, just one fewer than all of last year, and the season isn't even a third over. It's the first time the Angels have been shut out at home in nearly two years, ending a run of 125 games in which they got at least one run.

Mays improved to 7-3 with his first shutout this season and third of his career.

He struck out only three, but it wasn't until the ninth that the Angels managed to even get two runners on base in one inning. Just when it looked like the Angels might get to him, Mays was at his best, four times leaving runners in scoring position.

The Angels took their best whacks at Mays in the second inning, even if they didn't get a hit.

Tim Salmon, hitting in the cleanup spot for the first time this season, walked to start with, one of his two walks for the night, Nos. 39 and 40 for the year, putting him on a pace that would easily surpass Tony Phillips' 1995 club record of 113. Then came three successive fly balls to center, two of them by Garret Anderson and Glenallen Hill sending Torii Hunter to the wall in dead center.

Hunter wasn't so successful the next inning, when he played Jorge Fabregas' leadoff single into a triple, doing little more than wave at the ball as it bounded past him and rolled to the wall.

Now, it's not wise to squander a triple by Fabregas, like most catchers more of a plodder than a sprinter; this one was just his fourth triple in 542 big-league games over eight years.

But the Angels did just that. Adam Kennedy flied to shallow center, David Eckstein bounced back to the pitcher and Darin Erstad grounded out to second, stranding a thoroughly winded Fabregas on third base.

In the Angels sixth, Erstad shot a two-out double just inside the left- field line - that stretched his hitting streak to 10 games - but he, too, was left in scoring position when Corey Kospie made a good play on Troy Glaus' hard grounder to third.

The Twins got three of their five hits off Rapp in the second inning. Matt Lawton got a one-out single to center, then Hunter lined a single to center.