Sliding Angels need a change

So, Frankie Rodriguez threw a slider that didn’t slide and a changeup that stayed up, and maybe the Angels closer used up all of his best stuff during all of those record appearances and saves during the regular season or maybe he lacked his usual dominance because of pitching only one inning in the previous nine days.

There’s more blame than clutch hits, so which finger would you like to point in which direction?

That’s what it came down to as the Angels, with those 100 wins and the best record in baseball, left their high hopes strewn all over the Angel Stadium bases, failed to get a key hit -- “that’s been our Achilles’ heel all season,” Manager Mike Scioscia said -- and ultimately faced the numbing reality that, having lost the first two games of the best-of-five divisional series with the dreadlock-absent Boston Red Sox, their famed closer’s next pitch may come in free-agent negotiation, and they are one loss from being swept by the Red Sox for the third time in the last five postseasons.

To avoid that, having blown the home-field advantage, they only have to defeat Josh Beckett, one of the best postseason pitchers ever, in Game 3 today in their house of horrors known as Fenway Park, and to avoid the ultimate elimination they only have to win three in a row from a team that “now has all 25 players pulling in the same direction,” said second baseman Dustin Pedroia in a pointed reference to the departed Manny Ramirez.

The Angels were pushed into this claustrophobic corner by Jon Lester’s outpitching John Lackey in a 4-1 loss in Game 1 and by a series of wasted opportunities as they inched back from Ervin Santana’s 4-0 deficit in the first inning of Game 2 before Rodriguez found himself in a 5-5 tie in the ninth inning.

That was when David Ortiz hit the Rodriguez slider for a double and J.D. Drew hit the changeup for a two-run homer and a 7-5 victory, the indomitable Jonathan Papelbon closing it out for the win two nights after getting the save in Game 1, leaving Scioscia and catcher Mike Napoli to defend their closer, who politely said he had nothing to say, assuredly aware he has possibly made his last appearance for the Angels six years after debuting as the sensational K-Rod in the 2002 World Series victory.

Both manager and catcher, despite some contrary statistics, said Rodriguez had improved as the season progressed, unfazed by a career-high 76 appearances and his big league records of 62 saves and 69 chances.

“Not one bit,” Napoli said when asked if Rodriguez had paid a price for that workload. “His fastball has gotten better and better.”

Of course, it wasn’t a fastball that either Ortiz or Drew hit.

It was an 88-mph slider and a hanging changeup, and Napoli said what he would be expected to say:

“In that situation I would go to those pitches again. Those have been ‘out’ pitches for him all year. I’m not going to second-guess one bit. I’m not second-guessing anyone.”

It shouldn’t have come down to two pitches in a tie game. The Angels could easily be 2-0 instead of 0-2. They had 20 hits in the two games but left 20 runners on base, and the first 19 of those 20 hits were singles, a meager string snapped by Chone Figgins’ triple leading off the eighth inning of Game 2.

The absence of a big hit at a big moment isn’t new. An overlooked fact as the Angels won 100 games is that eight American League teams scored more runs and eight hit more home runs.

Mark Texeira, acquired to take the Angels to the next postseason level, tried to do his part. He had five singles and a game-tying sacrifice fly in the two games and said, as a prospective free agent, “it kept going through my head in the last few innings” that his brief tenure in Anaheim might be over “and we had all worked too hard for it to end this way.”

There simply was no clutch hit, particularly while Daisuke Matsuzaka was making 108 pitches in the first five innings of Game 2.

Vladimir Guerrero had five singles in the two games but has now gone 56 postseason at-bats without an extra-base hit and with only one run batted in. Howie Kendrick looked like he was on a rehab assignment after his recent leg problems, going hitless in nine at-bats and striking out five times. The bottom four hitters in the Angels lineup were two for 31 in the two games, and there is no doubt that the Angels privately feel they wasted $50 million on Gary Matthews Jr., who did not start Game 2.

Scioscia preferred watching right fielder Juan Rivera, coming back from a broken leg, take a bad route on an Alex Cora double leading to a run in the fourth inning, and then, with the option of putting the 6-foot-3 former Gold Glove winner Matthews in right, watched the diminutive Reggie Willits fail to leap high enough to catch the Ortiz double in the ninth, the ball glancing off his glove.

The Red Sox, meanwhile, were 61-48 when Ramirez was dealt to the Dodgers at the July 31 trade deadline and haven’t missed a beat, going 36-19 since, counting these two wins over the Angels.

Of the disruptive atmosphere before the deal, Boston catcher and captain Jason Varitek said, “We were struggling as a team at the time, so if he had stayed it would have been a means to an end and if he had gone it would have been a means to an end. Nobody doubts how good he is, and I’m not saying he was a bad teammate, but we needed the resolution that came with the trade deadline. We needed it resolved.”

Now, said Pedroia, who hits second and teams with leadoff man Jacoby Ellsbury to form a creative team within the team, “We’re just out there playing baseball, but there may be a little more freedom than we had before the trade. We’re playing together and having fun.”

And still hitting home runs. Boston hit three in the two games, two by the new left fielder, Jason Bay. His two-run shot off Lackey turned around Game 1, and his three-run drive off Santana helped put the Angels in a 4-0 hole in the first inning of Game 2.

“Bay is the new Manny, I guess,” Angels center fielder Torii Hunter said. “They hit the big bombs and we hit singles. It was tough to swallow.”

A loss today and they will have a long, cold winter to digest it.