Rodney is the new Angels’ fan favorite — for booing

Fernando Rodney did the seemingly impossible Friday night. He made Angels fans miss Brian Fuentes.

Bobby Abreu hit a solo home run in the 14th inning to give the Angels a 4-3 walk-off win over the Seattle Mariners, the Angels’ second straight overtime victory following Wednesday’s 16-inning win over Cleveland.

But the 3-hour 55-minute game would have been over an hour and a half earlier had Rodney done his job.

Many fans cheered the Aug. 27 trade of Fuentes, the much-maligned closer, to Minnesota. They were tired of Fuentes’ soft-serve repertoire and wanted the hard-throwing Rodney to close.

But it was Rodney who got the Fuentes treatment Friday in Angel Stadium. The right-hander blew his second save in as many games, giving up two runs in the top the ninth inning and getting booed off the mound.

Angels starter Jered Weaver was in line for his first win since Aug. 6 after giving up one run and five hits in eight innings, striking out six and walking none.

The Angels took a 2-0 lead in the fourth on Howie Kendrick’s sacrifice fly and Jeff Mathis’ run-scoring single, ending a string of 33 innings in which Weaver had pitched without a lead, dating to the fifth inning of an Aug. 11 game against Kansas City.

They made it 3-1 in the sixth on Mathis’ suicide squeeze, but Rodney blew it in the ninth, allowing a one-out single to Franklin Gutierrez and run-scoring doubles by Jose Lopez and Casey Kotchman.

Rodney has allowed six runs and 12 hits in six innings of six games since taking over the closer role.

Four Angels relievers — Kevin Jepsen, Jordan Walden, Michael Kohn and Rich Thompson — combined to no-hit the Mariners in five extra innings, and Abreu won it with his 18th homer of the season, off Seattle reliever Brian Sweeney.

The combined 30 innings played Wednesday and Friday tied the franchise record for most innings in back-to-back games, set April 13-14, 1982, with 20-inning and 10-inning games against Seattle.

Incomplete pass

The Angels liked Patrick White enough to use a fourth-round pick on the outfielder in 2004 and a 26th-round pick on him in 2007.

Scouting director Eddie Bane said Friday that if White had signed out of high school in 2004, “He would be a starting center fielder in the big leagues right now.”

But when White, who spurned the Angels’ 2004 offer of about $350,000 so he could play football at West Virginia, became available after being cut by the Miami Dolphins this week, the Angels passed.

White, 24, signed a minor league deal with Kansas City on Friday.

“We were aware of him getting cut by the Dolphins, but we weren’t interested,” Bane said. “He hasn’t played baseball since high school.”

Forget me not

Matt Palmer was something of a rotation savior last season, going 11-2 with a 3.93 earned-run average after a mid-April call-up, but he’s been an afterthought in 2010, going four months — May 6 to Wednesday — between appearances for the Angels.

But the right-hander, sidelined because of a right clavicle sprain, hopes to work his way back into the team’s plans, and his three scoreless innings to gain the victory in Wednesday’s 16-inning win over Cleveland was a good start.

“I know what I can do, and they know what I can do,” said Palmer, who went 0-1 with a 6.26 ERA in nine games in April and early May. “I know it wasn’t pretty earlier in the year. I was hurt. I tried to suck it up and do what I could, and that didn’t work. But Wednesday was good for me.”

Playoff-bound

At least one Angels pitcher is guaranteed a playoff start this season. Joel Pineiro, out since July 28 because of a left rib-cage strain, will pitch for Class-A Rancho Cucamonga against Lake Elsinore in the California League playoffs Sunday.

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com