*-Update:  Arte Moreno apparently noticed the season Mike Napoli had. On September 30, the Angels dismissed general manager Tony Reagins.

While in Baltimore and Tampa and Atlanta and Houston some astonishingly riveting last-day-of-the-season stuff was going down, involving the Red Sox and Rays, Braves and Cardinals … the 2011 Angels went quietly, meekly into history. They lost their last four, stepping out of the American League wild-card-race madness, and finishing as just a so-so, 86-76 team that ended 10 games behind Texas in the AL West.

Ah, Texas. Nice team. Decent pitching, an offense with a lot of ways to hurt you, including  this Mike Napoli guy. Or, as I prefer to think of him, the guy who could have helped the Angels, instead of the Rangers, win the division this season.

Odd case, Mike Napoli. The Angels letting him go as part of that horrendous Vernon Wells trade.

And what was quitting on Napoli really about? I’m thinking it was about … Mike Scioscia

Here’s my thinking:

Mike Napoli and Mike Scioscia would seem to have much in common. Well, three big things, anyway: They both are/were burly catchers and they both seem thoroughly Italian-American. And they’re both named Mike.

But those obvious similarities mask (and may even exacerbate) what actually is a drastic difference in these two baseball figures.

Napoli has significant power, especially for a catcher; his 92 career homers for the Angels in part-time action for five seasons must make him one of the top 20 homer guys in club history, since Reggie Jackson at 123 homers is No. 10 all-time. Mike Scioscia had almost no power. Despite his size (6-2, 200-plus), he hit only 68 home runs in 13 seasons, and never more than 12 in one season. Napoli’s homer totals with the Angels, by season: 16, 10, 20, 20, 26.

But Napoli also strikes out quite a bit. His six-year total of 548 whiffs (in 2,236 plate appearances) already is far beyond Scioscia’s career total of 307 strikeouts (in 5,056 plate appearances). Thus, Napoli already has about 80 percent more whiffs than did his former manager in about 45 percent of Scioscia’s PAs.

Napoli also is not a very good catcher, but Scioscia was. If we look at the most easily comprehended catching stat, caught-stealing, Scioscia was far better at throwing out runners attempting to steal, gunning down 34 percent in his career, including two seasons of 40 percent or better. Napoli, meanwhile, has thrown out only 25 percent of runners trying to steal in his career, and that includes his year with the Rangers, which was by far his best. Napoli at catcher for the Angels was an invitation to run; he threw out only 23.9 percent of runners (83 of 348) in his Anaheim career.

Plus, and this is harder to quantify, but … Mike Scioscia was a very bright ballplayer, just as he is a very bright manager. He did the little things well, and apparently was considered outstanding at calling a game and at managing pitchers. He was thinking all the time.

Mike Napoli is a friendly dope. He just is. Talk to him for a few minutes, as I have, and you are left with two impressions: Napoli is a nice guy … and he’s just not very smart.

Intelligence, of course, generally doesn’t get in the way of a baseball career. Except when 1) your position is catcher, where you’re intimately involved in every pitch and 2) your manager is Mike Scioscia, who was a very smart catcher and, presumably, has a very low tolerance for dumb catchers.

I have no hard evidence for this (like Scioscia coming out and saying it), but how else do we account for Scioscia continuing to give Napoli’s no-hit contemporary, Jeff Mathis, hundreds of at-bats when he had this homer machine sitting on his bench … unless Scioscia just could no longer abide the things Mike Napoli does not do well?

Jeff Mathis, remember, hits not at all. One writer, in an analysis published on Grantland in August, described Mathis as “the worst hitter in baseball, and it’s not even all that close” since he became the team’s primary catcher in 2008.

So, we come to 2011, and the Angels made a bit of a push for the division title, and were in the wild-card race until the final week, and this was with Jeff Mathis as their regular catcher, and the Texas Rangers using Mike Napoli at catcher in 61 games.

The Angels lost their final three games to the Rangers, in Anaheim, with Napoli hitting two homers in each of the last two games, taking him to 30 homers this year. But there’s more. Napoli also had an astonishing on-base percentage of .414, drove in 75 runs and scored 72, and hit 25 doubles. Maybe it was a career year, but aside from the OBP, not much of what Napoli did could not have been predicted by what he already had done for the Angels.

The Angels, though, didn’t need this guy. They didn’t want this guy. They prefer to have Jeff Mathis at catcher, and doesn’t he just about have to be the greatest defensive catcher in the history of baseball to make up for what the Angels lost, on offense, by giving up Mike Napoli?

I can understand not wanting to have Napoli at first base, if they were in love with 1B Mark Trumbo. But why could Napoli not have been used at DH (closed off to him last year as the Angels suffered through their Hideki Matsui mistake)?

My theory is that Scioscia didn’t want Mike Napoli around anymore. He was everything Mike Scioscia was not — a slugging catcher with pretty good speed, and that made Scioscia jealous, but also a bad catcher who did not grasp the nuances of the game, and that must have made Scioscia crazy.

In a stat-driven era, it’s interesting to think that things as imprecise as “I don’t like that guy” still have currency, but how else do we explain the Angels/Scioscia/Napoli situation?