Ron Washington, the first-year manager of the Angels, is unfailingly positive. He was hired in part to inject relentless rah-rah into a franchise that hasn’t reached the playoffs since 2014.

Yet moments after news broke that Mike Trout would need surgery to repair a torn meniscus … four days after Anthony Rendon revealed he has a “high-grade partial tear” in his left hamstring … four months after Shohei Ohtani signed with the Dodgers rather than return to the Angels … Washington’s enthusiasm was muted.

“We’re going to miss Mike,” he said. “I think we all know what he means to this organization. But the thing about baseball — there’s a game on the schedule. You have to play it. You have to put nine guys on the field. So we’re going to put nine guys on the field.”

Washington’s problem is finding nine guys to form a lineup that can hit well enough to consistently win, especially when the staff earned-run average is 28th out of 30 MLB teams at 4.98. All nine of those guys probably aren’t on the Angels roster and the farm system is bereft of prospects remotely ready to become one of those nine.

Never mind star power — that vanished along with Trout, Rendon and Ohtani — the Angels need players who can perform at an acceptable major league level. After a 2-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday dropped the Angels record to 11-20, they are in the middle of the pack among MLB teams in runs (17th), batting average (13th) and OPS (15th). Can they sustain that without Trout and Rendon?

“Some guys are going to get the opportunity they’ve been craving, and we’ll see what they can do with it,” Washington said.