ANAHEIM -- The Twins have remained steadfast in their confidence in Griffin Jax through an extended stretch of poor luck and struggles -- but a month into this funk, he still hasn’t been able to right the ship.

And yet another challenging outing for the right-hander led to another tough outcome on Friday night, when the Angels rallied for two runs off Jax in the bottom of the seventh inning to push back against several clutch hits by the Minnesota offense. The result: Jax took his sixth loss in the last month as the Twins’ bullpen faltered late for a second straight game in a 5-4 loss at Angel Stadium.

“There were a lot of hitters, at least, where [Jax] was fully ahead and able to command or have command of whatever he wants to do,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He has the ability to make any pitch he wants. It hasn’t gone smoothly for him. I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s been an easy one.”

The Angels’ rally negated the efforts of Alex Kirilloff’s pinch-hit, two-run double to tie the game in the sixth and Willi Castro’s go-ahead solo homer in the top of the seventh. That brought in Jax to protect the one-run lead, with Jorge López and Jhoan Duran likely to pitch behind him.

And, in fact, the Twins got Duran hot in the bullpen to face Shohei Ohtani as Jax labored through a 33-pitch inning, but after Zach Neto’s one-out single and Mickey Moniak’s game-tying RBI triple, Baldelli elected not to pitch Duran in a tie game -- instead saving him almost exclusively for late leads this season. And with Jax’s pitch count soaring, Renfroe ended his outing with an RBI single that sent the Twins to their third loss in four games.

After Jax broke out with a 3.36 ERA in 65 appearances last season, the Twins were counting on him to be one of their primary setup men for Duran -- but instead, he has allowed at least one baserunner in 12 of his last 13 appearances, spanning three blown saves and six losses that have ballooned his ERA to 5.59.

Many of the games early in that stretch seemed like anomalies at the time, due to soft contact leading to unlikely base hits or defensive lapses behind Jax -- but now, some louder hits are falling.

For now, the Twins have little choice but to hope Jax can pitch his way out of these struggles, in part because the leverage corps of their bullpen is already down a man due to Caleb Thielbar’s oblique strain.

They perhaps might have hoped that Jorge Alcala, Jovani Moran or Emilio Pagán might bolster the leverage group at some point this season, but Alcala is injured (and wasn’t effective before his injury), Moran has been wild and Pagán still hasn’t found that level of consistency.

The most promising candidate to fill some leverage innings might, in fact, be newcomer Brock Stewart, who entered in relief of Jax to record the final out of the seventh inning and pitched a clean eighth inning to mark his 10th consecutive scoreless appearance to begin his Twins career since he joined the bullpen on April 27.

The Twins haven’t been able to give Jax an easier outing or two to regain his confidence because the season-long combination of strong starting pitching and inconsistent offense has meant that the team has almost always been playing close games, which has put a heavier-than-normal emphasis on Jax, Duran and López.

“I’d love to find [Jax] one or two softer landing spots,” Baldelli said. “We just don’t have them right now. Every game that we’ve played, recently it feels like at least, they’ve been tight. … [In] very few of the games have we had those bigger leads for him to go out there and pitch."

The Twins continue to believe in Jax’s stuff, and on Friday, he even debuted a cutter he developed at Driveline during the offseason to add to his slider-fastball-changeup mix. They feel one outing is all it could take to get him right -- but thus far, he hasn’t been able to build on the good ones.

“He's got great stuff, a great pitcher,” starter Joe Ryan said. “Talk about somebody who's dedicated to their routine and process. It's never going to be a question for me -- I'm not really worried about him. … He has such good stuff that I think it's not going to be a problem.”