A lot happens, but Angels lose

A rare four-homer game by the power-starved Angels, including two-run shots from both sides of the plate by Gary Matthews Jr., and consecutive shots by Shea Hillenbrand and Mike Napoli -- what are the odds of that? -- dissolved into a haze of controversy, frustration and anger Sunday for the Angels.

Nelson Cruz drove a Scot Shields slider over the wall in right field with one out in the ninth inning, the eighth home run of the game, to give the Texas Rangers a 7-6, walk-off victory over the Angels, who blew a pair of two-run leads and failed to score after loading the bases with none out in the seventh inning of a tie game.

The sudden-death loss, which ended a four-game winning streak, and the seventh-inning rally that fizzled were difficult to swallow, but what really angered the Angels was the ejection of reliever Hector Carrasco, whose first pitch after entering in the bottom of the seventh, a 78-mph curve, grazed Ian Kinsler’s helmet.

In the top of the seventh, Rangers reliever Joaquin Benoit, with a runner on second, had drilled Matthews in the backside with an 0-and-1, 94-mph fastball. Matthews and Benoit exchanged glares, but home-plate umpire Alfonso Marquez did not issue any warnings.

Then Carrasco hit Kinsler, who made little attempt to get out of the way, and the Angels’ reliever was tossed. Mike Scioscia stormed out of the dugout to argue, and Marquez ejected the Angels’ manager as well.

“How does he not find intent with what Benoit did to a guy who hit two home runs? He threw behind his back,” Scioscia said. “Then he finds intent with our guy, who throws an off-speed pitch that slips out of his hand and hits a guy? I’m baffled by that call on the field. I still haven’t got an explanation. Absolutely ridiculous.”

Carrasco’s crime wasn’t so much that he hit Kinsler with a pitch; it was that he hit him in the wrong place.

“The head shot precludes everything,” crew chief Rick Reed said. “They do not want us to allow anybody to get hit in the head without any repercussion.... We walk a fine line. The commissioner does not want bench-clearing brawls, and this has put an end to them.”

A series of brushback pitches and beanballs between the Angels and Rangers last August led to a benches-clearing brawl, but Reed said the history of hostility between the teams had nothing to do with Marquez’s actions Sunday.

“We had no heads up [from the commissioner’s office] for this series,” Reed said, “so there was nothing we read into it.”

Carrasco was incredulous.

“I told him, how can I throw at somebody with a breaking ball?” he said. “Especially in a tie game, I’m not going to hit somebody. And why would I hit someone in the head? If I hit somebody, it’s going to be in the leg or the ribs. That’s a bad call. I still can’t believe it. He threw me out with one pitch. That’s the shortest outing I’ve ever had in my life. One pitch. And a breaking ball. Unbelievable.”

Scioscia, who probably will ask the commissioner’s office to review the call, and Carrasco contend that Marquez should have realized the pitch slipped out of Carrasco’s hand, and that a slow breaking ball could not be delivered with such intent.

“But you still have to do something,” Marquez countered. “Where do you draw the line and say I think it slipped? I don’t know that. I’m going on the situation -- first pitch, first batter, at the head.”

Added Reed: “If the shoe was on the other foot, Mike would have had a legitimate gripe. It was a tough situation. He picked a very poor time to hit a guy in the head.”

Marquez said he didn’t issue a warning after Matthews was hit because he “didn’t think the pitch was intentional.”

If he had issued warnings, “We would have tied Mike’s hands,” Marquez said. “We didn’t think it was necessary at the time. To come back and hit a guy in the head is different. If he had hit him anywhere else, we would have issued warnings. When the pitch hits him in the head, something has to be done. And because it was at the head, it doesn’t require a warning for an ejection.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com