Dodgers turn in work that’s full of errors

It was an all too familiar scene at Angel Stadium. A team that has trouble scoring on its own kept giving the opponent extra at-bats and runs.

Only this time the red-clad fans among the crowd of 44,301 left happy, smiling and chanting “Sweep!” It’s not their problem anymore. All of a sudden it’s the 2007 Dodgers who are looking a lot like the 2006 Angels.

Here was the Angels’ template last season: mediocre offense and a defense that made the most errors in the American League.

That’s looking a lot like the Dodgers right now. An offense in the middle of the pack that can’t deliver with runners in scoring position and a defense that has the most errors in the National League (36) after the Dodgers committed two more in a 4-1 loss to the Angels on Sunday.

The errors don’t even take into account the extra bases opponents have brazenly taken without fear of the arms of Juan Pierre and Luis Gonzalez.

Despite being outscored, 19-4, in dropping all three games over the weekend, offense shouldn’t be the primary concern. The Dodgers hit the ball harder than the Angels on Friday; they just didn’t hit them to the right spots. The Dodgers scored 35 runs in their previous five games before this series, so they’re not completely anemic.

The Dodgers are still a division-leading team (barely), but right now it’s hard to consider them a very good team. Not with an offense this susceptible to droughts and a suspect defense.

Teams can get hot at the plate. Bad defensive teams tend to stay bad. When asked what can be done to change it, Dodgers Manager Grady Little smiled and said, “Sometimes it takes different people.”

“But those kinds of things happen. Right now we didn’t play good baseball defensively. Every mistake we made out there, we had to come back and pay for it with runs on the board for the other team.”

It didn’t help that the Dodgers were 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position.

“They outhit us in key situations and they caught balls, and we didn’t catch a couple,” Little said. “And that was the difference.”

This worked just about the way the Angels envisioned it. They have tightened their defense and now they can just worry about the basic game plan: Get one of the best rotations in baseball to hold down its end, make things happen on the basepaths, keep Vladimir Guerrero in the middle of the action and hand the ball to Francisco Rodriguez to wrap it up.

They left it up to the Dodgers’ defense to fill in the gaps.

Guerrero hit a two-out double in the first inning and would have been stranded if Wilson Betemit could have handled a grounder to third by Gary Matthews Jr. That kept the inning alive, and Casey Kotchman brought Guerrero home with a single.

None of the three runs in the fifth inning should have scored, either. The Angels were doing their thing again, with Erick Aybar reaching third base on a hit-and-run single by Jose Molina. Then Nomar Garciaparra made a quick throw home on Tommy Murphy’s grounder and catcher Russell Martin held on to the ball even though Aybar sent him sprawling.

Lowe struck out Reggie Willits and should have been out of the inning when he got a ground ball from Orlando Cabrera. But Betemit double- and triple-clutched, then threw a one-hopper to first on a play that was generously ruled a hit. Just what the Dodgers needed: an extra at-bat for Guerrero. With the bases loaded, no less. Guerrero hit a hard ball up the middle that Furcal fielded but threw wide to first, allowing Murphy to follow Molina home.

Poor Lowe. It seemed as if the only hard shots the Angels hit came right back at him, practically knocking his cap off like Charlie Brown. After a Matthews single up the middle that drove in the Angels’ fourth run, Lowe wound up face down on the back side of the mound. He grabbed some dirt and threw it as if he were trying to pick a runner off third base.

“Continually just missing them, it gets a little frustrating,” Lowe said. “Especially at that point. [Kelvim] Escobar was on his game, and I gave them a 4-0 lead.”

It’s unfair to say he gave the Angels a 4-0 lead. It’s not as if he was lobbing the ball over the plate and saying, “Here, hit it.” He pitched a fine game lasting all eight innings, keeping the ball down, not walking anybody. For him to take responsibility for this loss would be like Chuck D taking responsibility for what’s become of Flavor Flav.

Things didn’t go Lowe’s way Sunday. To make matters worse, as he was addressing the media, the native of Dearborn, Mich., glanced at a clubhouse television and caught Teemu Selanne’s overtime goal that beat his Detroit Red Wings.

“You’ve got to be [kidding] me,” Lowe said, facetiously adding, “It just keeps getting better.”

It does if you’re in Anaheim, where right now in baseball, just like in hockey, the prospects look better than the team that plays in Los Angeles.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/Adande.