Don’t Boo Umps, Boo the Angels

Understandable, perhaps, but on a fall Sunday evening that chilled like winter, rain and rage rendered thousands of conscientious fans colorblind.

They booed blue when they should have been booing red.

They blamed the umpires when they should have been blaming the Angels.

The season and the American League championship series ended Sunday at Angel Stadium with a 6-3 loss to the Chicago White Sox that was less about Sox magic than a Halo mirror.

The Angels weren’t good enough, and it was nobody’s fault but the Angels.

The Angels lost four of five games to a team that embarrassingly needed its bullpen for only two of 135 outs, and the withered finger can be pointed only at themselves.

“Right now, it feels like a failure,” said Darin Erstad, an Angel hitter finally connecting.

Agreed, the umpiring in this series was awful, from beginning to Eddings.

Absolutely, fans will talk forever about how the Sox’s winning run in Game 2 never should have been allowed to reach base in what will be one of the biggest umpiring blunders in postseason history.

True, the umps struggled in many ways before finally getting a tough call right on a missed tag by Kelvim Escobar that led to the Sox’s go-ahead run on Sunday.

But, after they finally left the field Sunday night amid catcalls and obscene gestures from the crowd, the crew could be content in one thing.

None of them was as bad as the Angels. The calls weren’t as bad as the swings. The decisions didn’t give up the runs.

That wasn’t an umpire who makes $14 million a year batting .050 in the series.

No, that was Vladimir Guerrero who, if he was healthy as claimed, may not be the October leader that the Angels thought they were buying.

That’s right, he batted ohhhh-fifty, hitting just two balls out of the infield in 20 at-bats, then whiffing on the most important of postgame questions.

Do you take any personal responsibility for this loss?

“No, I don’t feel personally responsible,” he said through an interpreter. “We win and lose as a team. The responsibility is on all of us.”

Hmmm, he didn’t quite sound like the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, who called himself a “dog” after playing poorly in the first round against the Angels and apologized to the coaching staff.

“I’m going to keep my head up and hopefully next year we’ll be better,” Guerrero said.

Other Angels weren’t taking it so well.

Mike Scioscia kept the clubhouse closed for more than 15 minutes after Sunday’s loss and still cameras were banned so the players could not be photographed in distress.

Most of them appeared a bit heavy-eyed and shaken, Jarrod Washburn so much that he was still wearing his uniform more than 30 minutes after the game, and he didn’t even play.

This is because he will probably never wear the uniform again, his six-year Angel career over when he leaves as a free agent this winter.

“They flat-out beat us, they just whipped us,” Washburn said.

No, that wasn’t an umpire who batted leadoff for the Angels, yet was 0 for 8 when leading off an inning.

That was Chone Figgins, who batted .118 in the series. Could he be trade bait this winter if the Angels have a chance to get a power hitter?

No, that wasn’t an umpire was has a long-term contract yet looked old and sore.

That was Garret Anderson, who batted only .176 with one extra-base hit.

No, the guy behind the plate who batted only .118 and might have written his ticket out of town was not an umpire, but Bengie Molina.

No, Steve Finley was blue before Sunday’s game because he had been benched with a .222 average, but that doesn’t make him an umpire.

And, no, those weren’t umpires who rushed through their plate appearances in the last two innings of their season.

Those were Angels, who saw only 19 pitches in those two frames, hacking at 12 of them.

“We need to help the offense out,” General Manager Bill Stoneman said. “We need to get a bat.”

Is it any wonder that the White Sox ended the night dancing across the wet grass while the Angels stared at them from their dugout?

Well, at least a couple of Angels stuck around to stare. Most of them disappeared as quickly as their bats.

“It has nothing to do with calls or breaks or bounces, they just outplayed us,” John Lackey said.

Now that he mentions it, it was Lackey who inexplicably gave up three runs in the first inning of Game 3.

Considering Lackey was pitching better than anyone in the rotation, and considering the Angels had just flown home from the Game 2 debacle tied at one game apiece, the entire series may have turned on that inning.

If not, then it turned when Ervin Santana gave up five runs in 4 1/3 innings the next night.

“We need hitting, but if there’s a starting pitcher out there that we can get, you can never have enough arms,” Stoneman said.

That is particularly true in the bullpen, with a left-hander needed to replace Escobar when he moves back to the rotation.

There is plenty of work required this winter. The Angels are no longer a cute little Southern California story. They are a well-funded operation with a high payroll and high expectations.

After a splendid six months where they made all the right moves, they must improve on six days where the bad calls were all theirs.

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