Angels Stay in It but Can’t Win It

Arte Moreno said he would have signed a contract before the season if someone had guaranteed that his Angels would be three games out of first place in the American League West in late July.

“A lot of teams aren’t in that position,” Moreno said Thursday afternoon before the Angels played the Seattle Mariners at Angel Stadium. “We’re in the game.”

Given a chance to sign off on the position pitcher Aaron Sele put the Angels in in the first inning Thursday night -- three runs in, pitching coach Bud Black on his way out to the mound -- Moreno might have politely declined.

But remarkably enough, this became a game the Angels played to the limit, even if they did end up losing it.

Bengie Molina’s two-run home run with one out in the ninth capped a five-run rally as the Angels overcame Sele’s shaky start to send the game into extra innings before Bret Boone’s run-scoring single in the 13th gave the Mariners a 6-5 victory.

Ichiro Suzuki, whose one-out double was his career-high fifth hit, scored the go-ahead run when Boone’s two-out single off Kevin Gregg (3-1) eluded diving second baseman Adam Kennedy and rolled into center field.

Bobby Madritsch (2-0) stranded pinch-runner Curtis Pride at second to end the game and complete his fourth inning of scoreless relief. The loss dropped the Angels 3 1/2 games behind the Oakland Athletics, who earlier in the evening had beaten Texas, 7-6, and overtaken the Rangers for the division lead.

The Mariners appeared well on their way to ending a 15-game road losing streak when closer Eddie Guardado came in to pitch the ninth with a two-run cushion. But after Robb Quinlan’s single caromed off second baseman Boone and into right field, Molina hit a 2-and-2 pitch over the fence in left to tie the score.

The Angels put the potential winning run on second base when David Eckstein drew a one-out walk and moved up on Chone Figgins’ walk, but Garret Anderson struck out and right fielder Suzuki made a nice play tracking down Vladimir Guerrero’s fly ball in foul territory for the final out.

The Angels squandered another chance in the 12th after Anderson led off with a bloop single to center and went to third on Guerrero’s single up the middle. Guerrero took a wide turn around first base and was thrown out.

The Angels still had a runner at third with only one out. Madritsch intentionally walked Jose Guillen to set up the double play, but the Mariners didn’t need one after Darin Erstad popped out to Boone and pinch-hitter Josh Paul struck out.

“We had all kinds of opportunities,” Angel Manager Mike Scioscia. “We just didn’t complete the task.”

Sele appeared headed for his first defeat of the season after dropping the Angels into a five-run hole in the third.

The Mariners didn’t hit their former teammate particularly hard during their three-run first, pushing their first run across the plate thanks to a pair of bloop singles and a single through the right side of the infield.

But by the time Jolbert Cabrera doubled in two more runs with Seattle’s fourth hit, Sele had yielded as many hits in one inning as five Angel pitchers had the previous two games while recording back-to-back shutouts.

Justin Leone added a two-run homer in the third for Seattle, which may have revived reluctant reliever Ramon Ortiz’s hopes of supplanting Sele in the Angel rotation. Ortiz gets another chance to make his case tonight when he makes a spot start in place of the injured Jarrod Washburn.

Trailing, 5-0, the Angels did their best to claw back Thursday with single runs in the third, fourth and fifth innings. Seattle put the Angels in position for big innings in the third and fourth by making errors, but the Angels could push across only two unearned runs while stranding five runners.

Guerrero’s 22nd homer in the fifth got the Angels within 5-3.