ANAHEIM, Calif. — The delicate issue facing the Toronto Blue Jays at this moment is deciding when Josh Johnson’s troubles are no longer a slump that will eventually resolve itself, but a more fundamental problem in need of extreme intervention.

Things certainly look headed toward the latter after Thursday’s 8-2 beat-down from the Los Angeles Angels, the right-hander yanked after just 2.1 innings with the bases loaded, 10 hits on the board and seven runs in.

Since Johnson’s last win — a six-inning, four-run effort June 23 against the Baltimore Orioles — the pending free agent has allowed 39 runs, 31 earned, on 49 hits and 12 walks over 31.1 innings covering seven starts.

He’s 0-6 during that span while the Blue Jays have lost all seven games — horror-show stuff.

“We’re searching for answers, he’s searching for answers,” manager John Gibbons said afterwards. “I got nothing more than that, to be honest with you.”

On their own, Johnson’s struggles would be bad enough, but the hangover effect all the extra innings the bullpen has needed to log means the Blue Jays also pay for the truncated outings in subsequent games through tired or unavailable relievers.

Cumulatively, the team price is becoming very, very steep.

“Just frustration,” Johnson said of what he’s coping with right now. “I’m out there trying to battle, trying to get through it, trying to stay positive, and the worst part is doing that to my bullpen, doing that to my teammates, having to stand out there and watch that.”

But much like the dilemma the Blue Jays faced last year and this spring with Ricky Romero — who coincidentally allowed one run on five hits and three walks with seven strikeouts over six innings for triple-A Buffalo on Thursday — doing something, anything, isn’t as simple as it appears.

In Romero’s case, the left-hander was an all-star in 2011 and tied to a long-term deal that runs through 2015 when he lost the strike zone and couldn’t relocate it, so there were long-term considerations on both the baseball field and balance sheet to be considered. It wasn’t until last September that they decided to skip him a start — once rosters were expanded — and when Romero struggled again this spring, they finally optioned him to the minors.

With Johnson the external factors are different but no less complex. As a pending free agent, both he and the Blue Jays are motivated to get things right, Johnson to raise his value on the market, the club to safely make him a qualifying offer so at minimum they get draft-pick compensation should he depart.

At this point, however, neither is happening and while the Blue Jays have a responsibility to not sabotage Johnson’s value by pulling him from the rotation, there comes a point where they also need to be responsible to the other 24 players on the roster.

“He’s one of our guys, he works as hard as anybody, and it’s a cruel business,” said Gibbons, who made a point of stopping Johnson as he walked off the mound to give him a pat of encouragement on the chest. “He’s one of those guys you root for, he’s got that personality, he’s a good guy and you feel for guys like that. He’s had a lot of success at this level, and he’s rock-bottom right now.”

The Blue Jays insist Johnson is healthy — the knee tendonitis Gibbons mentioned earlier this week described as nothing major, and the right triceps inflammation that landed him on the DL back in April a non-issue — and a move to the first-base side of the rubber showed few results in its debut.

Johnson first experimented with it about a month ago but after a terrible bullpen, he bailed on the switch until the idea was rekindled this week.

“Little weird but I felt good,” Johnson said of the change. “Felt like I made some pretty good pitches, but then again they were hitting the ball all over the place.”

Where do things go from here?

Pitching coach Pete Walker promised to “look at everything from tipping to whatever at this point, trying to figure out how to get him through that inning and get him through the rest of the season.”

“He’s in the zone,” Walker continued, “he just misses too much on the plate right now, getting behind some hitters and elevating some pitches. He’s not off a lot, he’s just off enough where they’re squaring up some balls and hitting them hard. He’s on the right path doing what he’s doing, obviously he needs a 1-2-3 inning, a couple of them to get him going, keep his mind right.”

To be fair, Johnson’s outing Thursday might have turned out differently if Rajai Davis or Emilio Bonifacio had been in left field to start the game, either easily catching Kole Calhoun’s lazy fly to the corner that dropped in front of the hobbled Melky Cabrera.

Johnson recovered to get Mike Trout and Josh Hamilton before the inning unravelled with five straight hits, a rally that finally ended on Chris Iannetta’s fly ball to right and with the Angels up 4-0.

A clean start might have helped him build some confidence and trust in an ability that couldn’t have simply disappeared over the last few months. Instead, he’s now given up 21 runs during the first two innings of his past six starts.

“That would be nice, that would be a good starting point,” Johnson said of catching an early break or two to build off. “I think you make a lot of your own luck, and it just seems like nothing is going my way. I’ve got to keep battling.”

Cabrera, back in action after two days off, left the game in the fourth inning with knee irritation, and once again looked like a man running with sandbags on his back. A trip to the disabled list for him came after the game, with reliever Neil Wagner recalled from triple-A Buffalo to take his place.

As for Johnson, things are nowhere near as cut and dry. But as his struggles continue to deepen with each subsequent outing, a drastic course of action seems more and more necessary.