Scioscia has Ryan warm up in ‘pen in loss

ARLINGTON — It was the seventh inning at Globe Life Park on Wednesday afternoon, and the Angels were getting blown out. Their starting pitcher had recorded only seven outs, their bullpen was taxed, and their chance at a comeback had essentially evaporated. So Angels manager Mike Scioscia turned to one of his infielders, Brendan Ryan, and asked the question he dreads:

“You ever pitch?”

“I was like, ‘Heh, yeah,'” Ryan recalled after an eventual 15-9 loss to the Rangers. “He didn’t ask me my stats, but I would’ve been happy to share them.”

Ryan — who pitched two scoreless innings for the Yankees last year, thank you very much — took the long walk to the left-center-field bullpen and began to warm up, coming closer than any position player ever has to pitching for a Scioscia-led team.

“Cutter was moving,” Ryan said, “changeup was working.”

If the Angels had been held scoreless in the top of the eighth, Ryan would’ve pitched the bottom half, becoming the first position player to pitch for the Angels since current Red Sox hitting coach Chili Davis on June 17, 1993, seven years before Scioscia took over.

But Rafael Ortega blasted a three-run homer — the first of his career — to cut the Angels’ deficit to four, just reasonable enough for an actual pitcher like Jose Alvarez to come back out for the eighth and deprive Ryan of another “bucket-list moment.”

It would’ve brought some levity to an otherwise dispiriting series finale.

The Angels gave Hector Santiago a 1-0 lead in the first and a 4-1 lead in the second, and the erratic left-hander could not …

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