Boston starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka hands the ball to manager Terry Francona after running out of gas in the sixth inning last night against Los Angeles.

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The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

BOSTON — A couple of Red Sox players sat in the dugout early yesterday afternoon and agreed it seemed like an unusually quiet day at Fenway Park.

After all, the Yankees were gone after winning two of three games over the weekend, and all the chatter surrounding the once-again mysterious behavior of Manny Ramirez seemed to have blown over — for the time being.

There were more important things to concentrate on, and that was the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who last week swept the Red Sox on the West Coast. In addition, there is Major League Baseball’s trade deadline on Thursday.

The Red Sox had a chance last night, like so many other times this season, to put a little more distance between them and the Yankees, while catching the first-place Rays, but Boston came up a bit short and fell to the Angels, 7-5.

To add insult to injury, Baltimore pounded New York and Tampa lost to Toronto.

“It would have been nice to pick up (a game),” said Jacoby Ellsbury. “It would have been nice to get a win tonight.”

Boston received a much-needed spark from Jon Lester on Sunday night as the left-hander led the Red Sox to an impressive win over New York. Last night was Daisuke Matsuzaka’s chance to keep Boston moving forward, and it appeared early on that the right-hander was locked in.

He entered his 18th start of the season with an 11-1 record and a 2.63 ERA, but in the end suffered his second loss of the season. Matsuzaka worked five innings — plus five batters in the sixth — and allowed six runs on seven hits with two walks and three strikeouts.

“We made some selection errors in the sixth inning and also made some mistakes,” said catcher Jason Varitek. “I would say it was a combination of both. Dice-K’s stuff was much better than the end result today.”

The Red Sox held a 2-1 advantage after four innings, thanks to a two-run single by Manny Ramirez in the bottom of the fourth.

Matsuzaka cruised through the first five innings until he imploded in the sixth. That’s when he surrendered six runs, including a two-run homer to the Angels’ Casey Kotchman and a three-run blast by Torii Hunter. Matsuzaka faced five batters in that inning before he was replaced by Justin Masterson.

“I’ve got to believe the inning is different if we don’t lose (Angels leadoff man Chone) Figgins, especially when you’re ahead 0-2 to start the inning,” said manager Terry Francona. “They’re aggressive and (that walk) didn’t help the inning.”

The game quickly unraveled at that plate, which surprised Francona, especially given the way Matsuzaka worked in the early part of the game.

“I though he was throwing the ball pretty well,” said the manager. “That happened in a hurry. He leaves the last pitch up to Hunter and that kind of put an exclamation point on the inning because if he makes a pitch there, like he did earlier with the bases loaded (in the second), he has shown the ability to escape.”

Boston pushed across a run in the bottom half of the inning on a RBI-double by rookie Jed Lowrie, and added another in the bottom of the eighth inning, a RBI-single by Ellsbury.

Ramirez crushed a solo homer, his 20th of the season, over the Monster seats in the bottom of the ninth for a 7-5 final.

With that shot off Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez, Ramirez now has two home runs off K-Rod in their last four meetings, dating back to Game One of last year’s ALDS.

Also, Ramirez now has hit 20 or more home runs in the last 14 seasons to become only the eighth player in history to accomplish that feat. He joins Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Eddie Matthews, Rafael Palmeiro and Mike Schmidt.

Ramirez’s blast was one of only a few bright spots for the Red Sox last night as Boston left nine runners stranded and couldn’t come up with the timely hits.

“We didn’t capitalize with runners in scoring position,” said Youkilis. “I thought we put some good at-bats together but we didn’t get the big hit when we needed it.”

It may be too early to scoreboard watch, but last night was a missed opportunity for the Red Sox.

“We’ll catch fire here sooner rather than later,” said Ellsbury.

jmcdonal@projo.com