Printer-friendly

Contact Author

October 8, 2007

Prospectus Today

Three In, Two Knocking

by Joe Sheehan

This had been a bland postseason to date. In most games, the losing team has gotten down and stayed down. Nine of the 12 losing teams have scored three runs or less in their efforts, limiting the amount of back and forth we’ve seen after so much anticipation. Some of the games have been tense and low-scoring—Game One between the Cubs and Diamondbacks, Game Two between the Yankees and Indians—but most have just been nondescript. Pitchers’ duels are fun, but a mix of games makes for a good postseason. So far, we haven’t had that. The pitching of the Red Sox, Indians, Rockies, and Diamondbacks has limited the excitement.

Red Sox/Angels

Over three games, Red Sox pitching simply didn’t let the Angels do anything on offense. The Angels, prone to this kind of display at times, had three awful games against a good pitching staff. It happens, and it was oddly reminiscent of what some sox of a different color had done to them two years ago. I doubt the difference between these two teams is as wide as it appeared to be over the last five days. However, when you bat .192/.250/.253, you’re just not going to win very often.

I think Steve Stone is a terrific announcer, and I lost track of the salient observations he made during yesterday’s game. However, his insistence on talking about the Angels’ speed was distracting, and worse, it was counterfactual. I know I keep harping on this point, but the 2007 Angels were not a very fast team, certainly not compared to the 2002 and 2004 teams, and I would go so far as to describe them as slightly below-average in that department. Yesterday’s lineup featured four slow players (Garret Anderson, Kendry Morales, Mike Napoli, Juan Rivera), two players with average speed at best (Howie Kendrick, Vladimir Guerrero) and just three with above-average speed. Even if you give them a lineup with Reggie Willits and Gary Matthews Jr., it’s still not a team that features great speed.

Worse still was how they applied what speed they had. With two outs in the third inning of a scoreless game, Chone Figgins went first to third on a single to left by Orlando Cabrera, with Guerrero coming to the plate. Given the location of the ball and the on-deck batter, it may have been the single dumbest baserunning play I saw in the AL all season long. The Angels’ entire hope of winning consists of getting Guerrero to the plate with runners on base, and to potentially end the inning for a gain of 90 feet by a player who would score from second on just about anything was just bad, bad baseball. It wasn’t “Angels baseball” or “hustle” or “making things happen”—it was dumb. Figgins was safe, barely, and arguably on a blown call, and the Angels failed to score anyway.