For Glaus Encounters of Third Kind, Try Arizona

Made the drive from Los Angeles down to Los Angeles to see Los Angeles play baseball Tuesday.

You know, the LAA.

It’s on the television ticker, it’s on the nation’s scoreboards, it’s everywhere, this acronym for the new Los Angeles Angels, the team’s second-most important symbol this season.

After, you know, the 3B.

That one is nowhere. It’s not on the bases, it’s not on the highlight tape, it’s barely in the box score.

The Angels have essentially played this season without a third baseman, which is almost as odd as playing it without the name Anaheim.

The hot corner is, for them, the not corner, a fact again in evidence during Tuesday’s 5-3 loss to the Seattle Mariners.

Robb Quinlan, one of four Angels to play third base this season, dropped a foul ball near the dugout and hit only one pitch out of the infield.

The latter event occurred in the seventh inning with two out and runners on first and second and the Angels trailing by two. Quinlan flied out, the Angels never had a better chance, and the mess grows higher.

In 14 games this season, Angel third basemen have seven hits in 51 at-bats, a .137 average that is surpassed on the scale of yuck only by their number of runs batted in.

Two.

And their number of errors.

Four of the team’s seven.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, the new Mariner third baseman made two nice plays on sharp grounders at the beginning of the ninth inning to help save the game and perplex this columnist.

All this screaming I was doing about Adrian Beltre this winter, should I have saved some decibels for Troy Glaus?

Whether at third base or first base or designated hitter, whether he was snarling or snapping or just swinging, Glaus has thus far been terribly missed.

He’s in Arizona, where, in the same number of games as his Angel counterparts, he has five homers and 11 RBIs.

There’s more excitement in some of his swings than in some entire Angel innings, not to mention more punch.

Glaus left town for at least one of the same reasons that Beltre left town.

His bosses could think of better ways to spend the money.

Yet Beltre’s departure was treated with scorn while Glaus’ exit received only the slightest of shrugs because ...

Why again?

Because Glaus’ former bosses have a certain piece of 2002-vintage jewelry as confirmation that they know what they are doing.

That theory is currently being put to the test, out by painful out.

“We need a guy at third base who can make the plays, we need a guy who can bring up our level of offensive production

over there,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “We’ll see who steps up.”

They have an idea. That’s the other reason Glaus was set free.

It was about money, and McPherson.

That’s Dallas McPherson, a 24-year-old left-handed hitter who was one publication’s minor league player of the year last season when he hit 40 homers with 126 RBIs.

Of course, he hit them in places like Little Rock and Salt Lake City.

He had only 40 major league at-bats, hit three homers, all to center and left field, and it was enough for the Angels to anoint him.

But they haven’t really seen him since.

He sat out nearly all of the spring training games because of a herniated disk in his back, returned Monday, went hitless, then was benched Tuesday because of Mariner left-hander Jamie Moyer.

Scioscia is protecting him early.

But that can’t last if the Angels hope to last.

The other guys who have played the position; Quinlan, Maicer Izturis and Lou Merloni -- have one thing in common, and it’s not hits.

“Nobody is thinking about having to fill Troy Glaus’ shoes,” said Quinlan, batting .154. “It’s just that, when given the chance, none of us have really played well.”

Even after Glaus sat out much of last year because of shoulder surgery, he ended it with seven homers and 14 RBIs in the last month.

Some of his teammates, once upset that he didn’t play through the injury, came to appreciate his toughness. Even Glaus, once the clubhouse diva, seemed to mellow.

Yet even before October ended, the Angels announced that they would not be signing him.

He said he wanted to play only third base and not first base, but they never even tried to convince him otherwise.

He was gone before he was gone.

The Angels must now hope that haste doesn’t make second place.

“We had a guy who had earned the opportunity,” General Manager Bill Stoneman said. “Good clubs that are good for a long time give opportunities to young players.”

And, of course, he needed Glaus’ $45 million to sign, among others, Orlando Cabrera, Esteban Yan and Paul Byrd.

“The dollars it would take, we had needs elsewhere, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Stoneman said.

The Angels still have a $95-million payroll, the highest in town and one of the highest in baseball, so they weren’t being cheap.

But were they being smart?

Only time and McPherson and Quinlan will tell.

Until then, at least 3B can take the heat off the Angels’ other struggling symbol.

You know, the DH.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.