ANAHEIM -- An ugly seventh inning that required four relievers to get through undid an early lead, as the White Sox fell to the Angels 6-5 on Saturday night at Angel Stadium.

“It hurts a little bit because you have a lead, and then, you know, it kind of disintegrates there," manager Rick Renteria said.

• Box score

The White Sox bullpen had been on a good run of late, with its collective 3.28 ERA over the last month entering play Saturday ranking third in the American League. The seventh inning was an unfortunate deviation, with four walks (one intentional) and an error being the main culprits in the relief corps’ inability to preserve its team’s advantage.

Things started off well enough. When starter Hector Santiago exited after 4 2/3 innings with runners on first and second, right-hander Jimmy Cordero came in and struck out Justin Upton to escape his inherited jam, then hurled a clean sixth.

“Cordero did a nice job working through an inning-plus,” said Renteria. “Seemed to lose a little bit [toward the end].”

The trouble began when Cordero walked the leadoff man in the bottom of the seventh. Though he struck out the next batter, Matt Thaiss, his pitch count was up to 28 and he was lifted when Shohei Ohtani came in to pinch-hit.

Left-hander Jace Fry couldn’t get his guy, as Ohtani made short work of him by singling on a 1-0 cutter.

“Thought it was a pretty good pitch to Ohtani,” said Renteria. “He ended up just sticking his barrel out and got the end of it, and was just enough to get over [shortstop Tim Anderson’s] head.”

Evan Marshall was the next man in. A walk to David Fletcher to load the bases, a Mike Trout two-run single and a Ryan Goins fielding error left the game knotted at five runs apiece.

“Well-struck ball, we thought off the bat [it] might be, potentially, a double play. Obviously, got by [Goins],” said Renteria in reference to the error, adding that it would’ve taken a nice play to turn two on the ball.

With runners on second and third and one out, the White Sox elected to intentionally walk Kole Calhoun to set up the forceout. Marshall fanned Albert Pujols to get within an out of keeping the score tied.

He wasn’t able to. Marshall walked Brian Goodwin to bring in the go-ahead and, ultimately, winning run for the Angels. Josh Osich had to be called upon to get the final out of the frame.

“I just thought [Marshall] was down,” Renteria said. “His ball has a lot of action, but I thought there were a lot of balls. Normally, he trusts it in the zone, he lets the ball do what it does. I think it was below the zone a little bit today, not really getting it out there.”

When it came down to it, the White Sox had ample opportunities to get out of the frame with the lead intact. The execution just wasn’t there when they needed it to be.

“Everything was kind of put in place to get us through that inning, but it didn’t work out today,” said Renteria. “Not because these guys didn’t want to do it, obviously. It’s just, it’s baseball.”