Posted 4:50 PM by Sean
Here's a useful curative for those tired of hearing people yap about how much better baseball was in bygone times.

Posted 9:12 AM by Sean
The Angels sign Eric Owens to a one-year deal. Owens is basically a journeyman outfielder, who will partially fill the backup role that Orlando Palmiero had last year. The major differences are that Owens is right-handed, is used to playing close to full-time, has a moderately worse average and OPS, and much better speed.

Terms of the deal weren't indicated in the story. Owens made $2,000,000 last year and Palmiero made $1,000,000, but of course the Angels may very well have signed Owens for less than Palmiero would have been awarded if he'd been offered arbitration. Owens should be a decent addition - he won't be death at the plate, and his speed (in addition to 26 steals, he also had 25 infield hits last year) will fit in nicely with the small-ball ethic of Mike Scioscia. He'll be a good option as a late-inning baserunner, particularly if Alfredo Almezega isn't ready for the big club yet.

Before he's completely forgotten, though, I want to say one thing about Orlando Palmiero. After the games of August 13, 2002, the Angels were 71-48. The A's were 69-51, and had just won the first of what would turn out to be twenty consecutive victories. The Mariners were 73-46 and in first place. August 13, 2002 was also the last game Tim Salmon would play for the Angels until September 5 - an off day for the A's, but their streak would end on September 6.

In previous years, losing a key player like Salmon in the heat of a three-way pennant race would have been a disaster. Such things have happened with frightening regularity to the Angels; if you're reading these words I probably don't have to remind you of the specifics. But this year, Orlando Palmiero calmly stepped in for Salmon and went 19-for-50 (.380) over that stretch. On the morning of September 5, the A's were 88-51. The Mariners were 81-58. And the Angels were 84-54. Now, of course everyone on the team deserves credit for playing through Salmon's injury. But if one person can be said to have broken the "Angel curse," Orlando Palmiero has as good a case as anyone. So long, O-Pal: I wish you luck, I wish you fortune, and I wish you in the National League.

Posted 9:45 AM by Sean
With the addition of Cuban defector Jose Contreras ($32M over four years) to the pitching staff, and Japanese all-star Hideki Matsui ($21M over three years) to the lineup, the Yankees now have a $140 million dollar payroll for 2003. That's one-four-zero, zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-zero dollars, or well over twice the payroll of the Angels' 2002 world championship team. Actually, folks seem to disagree about the payroll - this New York Times story puts the number at $158M, and likely to grow to about $168M when they sign Clemens. The ESPN story puts the Yankees' luxury tax liability at about $7.5M.

Does Steinbrenner care about the luxury tax? It would seem not. Brian Cashman, the Yankees' GM, is quoted by ESPN as saying "The mindset is still for me to reduce payroll. Obviously, when the opportunities to sign Hideki Matsui or Jose Contreras presented themselves, it was time for us to make decisions, to move now and continue to work on cutting the payroll down the line.'' This explains Steinbrenner's physique; it's the same philosophy he applies to dieting. "The mindset is still for me to reduce fat. Obviously, when the opportunities to eat the cherry-cheese danish or the extra-crispy bucket from KFC presented themsevles, it was time for me to make decisions, to eat now and continue to work on cutting the calories down the line."

Ironically, Steinbrenner is one of the very few (if not the only) owners in the game to have the, uh, luxury of ignoring the tax, since his team has a huge built-in advantage in terms of popularity, the payoff for decades of dominance. So his TV deals are much more lucrative, his brand marketing is easier, and, as was the case with Contreras, he has a leg up on signing the most desirable free agents. The money being equal (and sometimes even if its not), free agents prefer the Yankees because they know they'll have a chance to win in New York. Occasionally, you'll find someone who offers a tepid defense of Steinbrenner along the lines of "well, he may be loathsome, but at least he spends the money necessary to improve his team." Bullshit. Steinbrenner spends money on the Yankees because he knows that a mediocre team won't cut it in New York - he's got so much money tied up in them that even a couple of seasons in which they're out of contention would collapse the whole thing like the proverbial house of cards. Admiring Steinbrenner for his willingness to spend money is like buying your local used car lot manager a beer for keeping the cars so shiny.

But the Yankees won't win forever - no team does. And when the collapse comes, complete with an apoplectic, desperate Steinbrenner, it will be epic, thunderous, and very, very entertaining.

Posted 2:03 PM by Sean
Looks like Santa left a turd in the Angels' stocking: Brad Fullmer was released last Friday. Perhaps more troubling, Stoneman is quoted as saying a couple of fairly stupid things, such as indicating that Fullmer is one of a half-dozen interchangeable guys available on the free agent market, and that he wasn't part of the "core" of the team. Now, keep in mind that the Angels might actually still sign Fullmer as a free agent, and released him primarily so that they wouldn't have to go to arbitration and risk having to pay him $5 million next year. So suppose they do managed to sign him as a free agent - makes for a nice, chummy clubhouse, huh? And who, exactly, is in this magical "core?" Do they have their own special lockers?

Anyway, apart from Fullmer, the guys mentioned in the article as possible left-handed DH for the Angels include Robert Fick, David Ortiz, Reggie Sanders, Frank Catalanotto, and Jose Cruz Jr. Let's look at what they've done against right-handers in the past three years, starting with our baseline, Fullmer:

Age-------AB-------AVG------OBP----SLG--------K----BB-----HR--------$
27--------1158----.302------.362----.546-----145---91------60------3.75M

(sorry about the crappy table formatting)

Now, everybody else on the list is also either 27 or 28, with one exception, so let's get him out of the way first:

REGGIE SANDERS
Age-----AB--------AVG----OBP------SLG------K-----BB----HR---------$
35-------964------.243----.312------.447-----254---83-----43------1.75M

Sanders would obviously be a substantial step down in every category except price, and his higher age indicates an increased propensity for further statistical decline and/or injury. He's also got a reputation as being death in the clubhouse. In other words, NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO...

EVERYBODY ELSE
---------------------Age------AB-----AVG-------OBP-------SLG-----K------BB----HR-------$
Fick----------------28-------842-----.271-----.336-------.457----127----82-----32----1.15M
Ortiz---------------27-------848-----.264-----.349-------.472----173---116----38-----0.95M
Catalanotto------28-------866-----.307-----.378-------.480----103----83----24-----2.475M
Cruz Jr.-----------28------1204-----.248-----.322-------.489----297--133----67-----3.7M

Looking at the numbers, it becomes clear that Fullmer costs more than the rest of these guys because he's flat-out played better. And, while just about everyone in the AL has a decent DH already, we now have to hope that the Angels don't have to get into a bidding war to re-acquire him, and that he can ignore Stoneman's boneheaded remarks if they do get him back.

Among the other candidates, it's hard to see the Angels shelling out for Cruz when they could get Fullmer, so he's probably out. Fick is slightly worse and slightly more expensive than Ortiz, so unless Ortiz is snapped up somewhere else, Fick's out of the running. Catalanotto hits better for average than does Ortiz, but Ortiz has a decided advantage in home runs and is substantially cheaper. So I'd guess that if Fullmer doesn't come back, Ortiz would be the next-best thing.

Posted 4:19 PM by Sean
After more than two glorious months, I got my first spam on the purgatoryonline@yahoo.com address. Two pieces, actually, including a breathily conspiratorial note in German that someone I know very well is dying to contact me for live online chat, but doesn't have the courage to contact me directly. Apparently, all I have to do is download their chatting software to find out who it is. Gee, how can I lose?

Anyway, I'll be offline doing the nog n' presents thing for the next few days, so no more updates until Thursday. In the meantime, have a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, kwazy Kwanzaa, or whatever you celebrate.

Posted 10:45 AM by Sean
The Angels may release Brad Fullmer rather than risk arbitration. This would be a mistake. Fullmer's the first DH they've had in a long time who was (a) content to be a DH and (b) reasonably good at it. They might be able to get David Ortiz, who was released by the Twins, to take Fullmer's spot, but I don't think I'm totally sold on Ortiz - they're the same age, but Fullmer's played a lot more games and seems to have established himself as a more reliable hitter (hence the $2 million difference in their salaries, I guess).

Posted 10:27 AM by Sean
Benji Gil re-signed for one year. Not much to say about that except "good." Again, though, it'll be interesting to see what happens throughout the year, with two second basement who both want to play full-time.

Posted 2:18 PM by Sean
Judge Kevin McCarthy has ruled that Barry Bonds's 73rd home run ball of 2001 should be sold, with the proceeds split evenly between Alex Popov (who initially caught the ball) and Patrick Hayashi (who ended up with possession after the ball came loose from Popov's glove in the ensuing melee). Personally, I didn't give a rat's ass which of them ended up with the ball. Two things about this story did catch my eye, though:

1. According to the story, "the judge made a point of saying that if he awarded the ball solely to Hayashi, it could send the wrong message to fans about civility in the stands." So the proper message is that being a brutal thug will only get you half a fortune?

2. Why not cut the ball in half? And not for some neo-Solomonic attempt to determine which of the two truly cares about the ball, either. I'd bet that the two halves of that ball would be worth more than the undivided ball, plus we'd get to look forward to some bozo with more money than sense eventually "reuniting" the pieces.

Posted 3:01 PM by Sean
The Braves reload. Likely 2003 rotation: Greg Maddux, Mike Hampton, Paul Byrd, Russ Ortiz, Kevin Millwood. Anybody previously arguing that the Mets or Phillies should be favored to win the East, please report to Joe's Bird-on-a-Bun for your complimentary helping of crow.

Posted 9:29 AM by Sean
Bad news for Cubs fans: the Cubs are suing the owners of the rooftop bleachers overlooking Wrigley Field.

If you've never been to Wrigley Field, or never seen a picture, or never talked to anyone at all who's got a vague notion of what baseball might be, part of Wrigley's unique atmosphere comes from the fact that there are thirteen buildings across Waveland and Sheffield Avenues that sell rooftop seats overlooking the game. They're generally rented out to parties at about $100 per person. They're unbelievably crappy seats - far worse than the worst upper deck, corner-of-right-field, crane-your-neck-and-squint seats - but of course at Wrigley watching the game is, shall we say, not paramount in the minds of some people. You can see some typical views from a Sheffield Avenue rooftop here, and a page that includes photos of the Sheffield and Waveland rooftops here. What started out as an informal, tailgate-style atmosphere on the rooftops has, over the years, become a fairly lucrative business for the owners, who have spent quite a bit of money installing professional-looking bleachers (in a couple of cases, they're even double-decked).

Now, the Cubs are looking to expand the bleachers (the ones inside Wrigley Field), a move that will block the view from some of the rooftops. This has touched of a good old-fashioned Chicago political streetfight, with the rooftop owners and the City seeking to have Wrigley declared an "historical landmark," which would greatly complicate the bleacher expansion project, as changes to landmarks have to meet various stringent requirements to ensure that whatever makes the structure "historical" remains in place. So now, after months of negotiations, the Cubs have apparently decided that they're not nearly loathed enough, so they're suing the rooftop owners.

The legal rationale here seems laughable. The Cubs are making two arguments: first, that the owners are providing stealing their product by providing seats to the game, and second, that they're infringing on the Cubs' copyright by showing the game on television so the folks on the rooftops can watch replays. Now, I didn't go to no fancy-pants law school, but even I can see some pretty big problems with these charges. First, I suspect they Cubs are going to have to do some serious 'splaining as to why, if this is such a grievous injury, they ignored it for decades. Second, someone should explain to them that their second argument undercuts their first - I mean, if the people watching the game from the rooftops need televisions to see the action properly, how the hell can you claim that they're seeing the same thing that people inside the stadium are seeing?

The larger issue, however, is that the rooftop bleachers actually enhance the atmosphere inside Wrigley Field. They're an utterly distinctive feature - no other ballpark in the majors has anything nearly as extensive. Along with the ivy, the hand-operated scoreboard, and the tradition of throwing back home run balls hit by the opposing team, the rooftop bleachers are what make Wrigley unique. Visitors coming to the park for the first time are always impressed and always find it funny. And Lord knows that Wrigley Field needs as much off-the-field fun as it can get, because the product on the field surely stinks to high heaven, most years. I can't believe that the Cubs' management doesn't realize that the only reason they consistently draw well is Wrigley Field - take the Cubs and put them in, say, Comiskey Park on the South Side of Chicago and their attendance would be cut 50% if they were lucky. If I were the Tribune Company (which owns the Cubs), I'd be thanking God every day that my team got to play in what will soon be the only truly historic park in the major leagues, and the last thing I'd want to do is screw around with the things that make it special. Because once you start getting rid of that stuff, the fans might get bored enough to watch the game. And when that happens...God help them.

Posted 2:10 PM by Sean
So I saw an episode of "She Spies," the show on which some of the Angels will be appearing, this weekend. It's actually pretty funny - it comes across like a spoof of stupid undercover cop/detective shows. The writing's pretty good, and the humor is bizarre enough that you don't know what to expect ten minutes ahead of time. The first scene of the episode had the three beautiful ex-cons who now secretly work for the FBI hanging in chains while interrogated by an evil mad scientist:

EVIL MAD SCIENTIST: I'll ask you one last time - who do you work for?

BEAUTIFUL EX-CON #2: And I'll tell you one last time - yo' mama!

EVIL MAD SCIENTIST (puzzled): Yo-Yo Ma? You work for the cellist?

Okay, so it's not The Kids in the Hall. It's still better than I thought it would be.

Posted 2:49 PM by Sean
Here's a pretty interesting article at Reason Online arguing - kind of - in defense of steroids in baseball. Not a position you see taken every day.

Posted 2:32 PM by Sean
Darin Erstad set records for consecutive errorless chances by an AL outfielder and no one realized it. Figures.

Posted 1:37 PM by Sean
The Angels are raising their ticket prices, from a median of $16.88 to a median of $21.28. That's still only the 17th-highest median in the majors. They'll also be experimenting with "variable pricing," i.e. tying price to demand, next year.

Posted 9:29 AM by Sean
Hi! Do you hate money? Want to exchange it for something incredibly ugly? Have I got a link for you!

Posted 9:13 AM by Sean
When did this turn into the Pete Rose blog? Anyway, John Dowd, who conducted the official investigation into Rose's gambling 13 years ago, now says that he believes Rose bet against the Reds during the time he was their manager, an allegation that has never before been made. Dowd indicates that he thinks that a more extended investigation would have found evidence to support that claim.

This seems to me to be appallingly irresponsible of Dowd. Look, either he's got evidence or he doesn't. If he does, tell us about it and let us be the judges of what it does or does not tend to prove. If he doesn't, he has absolutely no business speculating in public about what he thinks might have been found - it's ridiculously prejudicial and utterly useless from a decision-making standpoint. Dowd's a lawyer. He should know this.

Furthermore, the article seems to imply that the "evidence" we're talking about is that Rose never bet on the Reds when two particular pitchers started (the only one mentioned by name is Mario Soto). But there's a huge difference between not betting on particular pitchers to win and actually betting against your team. Maybe Rose thought those guys weren't very good, and didn't want to lose money on them. Or, granted, maybe he was betting against his team on those days. But "maybe" ain't nearly good enough, because if it is shown that Rose bet against the Reds, I don't think there's any penance he could do that would suffice to make up for it - betting against your team carries with it the presumption that you've tried to lose the game, and there's no coming back from that.

So if Dowd has real evidence, let's see it. Right now, he just looks like an ass.

Posted 9:06 AM by Sean
5) What is the worst transgression in baseball?

19.7% Betting on baseball games
20.5% Failing to hustle
31.7% Using cocaine
28.1% Using steroids

Total Votes: 48,546

This is just pig-ignorant. For once, Rob Neyer and I are more or less in agreement. The question of whether or not Pete Rose bet on baseball games, or even whether or not he should be reinstated, can be argued. But anyone who thinks that "failing to hustle" is the worst transgression in baseball needs some more time in the womb. You're not done baking yet.

Posted 9:22 AM by Sean
Pete Rose and Bud Selig have met to discuss Rose's possible reinstatement. We'll see. Realistically, the ball is entirely in Rose's court. If he admits to betting on baseball, it's a pretty good bet that he'll eventually be reinstated. If he doesn't admit to betting on baseball, it's a certainty that he won't.

One minor point about the article's second paragraph: "The sources said nothing has been agreed to at this point -- including whether or not Rose will be reinstated or regain eligibility for Hall of Fame induction." Major League Baseball actually has no control over who does or does not get into the Hall of Fame. The Hall is run by a private foundation (the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc.), and members are selected by those members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America who have been active for at least ten years. Presently, the Hall does not consider persons on MLB's ineligible list as being eligible for induction, but that's strictly their call--not MLB's, let alone Selig's. Technically, the effect of lifting the ban would, in fact, be to restore his eligibility for the Hall of Fame (although see below), but the implication that Selig has any real control over that is false.

Ironically, however, just as Rose may be moving towards removing one hurdle to his induction, another is on the horizon. The rules indicate that, in order to appear on the BWAA ballot, a player must have played at some point in the last 20 seasons. Rose's last year was 1986, meaning that he'd have to be reinstated within the next three years to be eligible for election. Of course, if blows that deadline, he'd still be elected by the Veterans' Committee, but given the contempt with which that particular body is looked upon by a lot of baseball fans, I'd guess Rose would vastly prefer election by the BWAA.

Posted 11:35 AM by Sean
“People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” - Rogers Hornsby

It turns out that winning the World Series for the first time is good for an extra three weeks or so before I go into baseball withdrawal. Look, I know a lot of people get off on analyzing trades and off-the-field developments, and I also know that the winter meetings are getting under way. But let me tell you something - I've always been deeply suspicious of people who spend any substantial chunk of time thinking about the business of baseball. In the winter, there's not much else to think about, but dissecting the biggest blockbuster deal ever made is still a piss-poor second to watching the Marlins play the Devil Rays when they're both seventy games out of first place. This is why kids stand in their back yards, whacking balls over the fence and circling imaginary bases to imaginary cheers, instead of sitting in their rooms, slamming down imaginary phones and gleefully announcing the imaginary acquisition of a utility infielder.

Which is also the reason that I don't see the attraction of rotisserie baseball. Or "fantasy" baseball, or whatever they're calling it now. I mean, I understand the urge to compete, and I understand being a baseball fan, but rotisserie baseball seems to combine these two in the most superficial way possible. At its core, rotisserie baseball is more about spotting trends and making business deals than it is about knowing or enjoying baseball, and if you're going to compete at spotting trends and making business deals, why the hell wouldn't you just play the stock market and make yourself some money while you're at it? If you want to really combine baseball and competition, it seems to me that there are better alternatives.

Of course, virtually all of my friends are in rotisserie leagues, and they're generally smarter than I am. So it's probably just me being obtuse.

Posted 3:53 PM by Sean
A big thanks to All-Baseball.com for the link. That's twice that this has been identified as the Anaheim Angels weblog to read. At least until someone else starts one.

Posted 3:44 PM by Sean
The Angels' tentative 2003 schedule is posted here, although I believe they're moving opening day back to Sunday, April 29, so that they can be on ESPN in prime time. Looking at the schedule, two things hit me immediately: (1) it's a total meat grinder for the first month and a half. They start in the West, of course, so they'll have six apiece with the Mariners, A's, and Rangers, then their next twenty-four games are against the Red Sox, Yankees, Indians, and Blue Jays. I don't think the Indians will be all that good, but the Blue Jays are definitely a team to watch out for next year. (2) We did all right on the intraleague draw. The Angels will be playing the NL East except for the Braves (plus two series with the Dodgers, of course), and they'll have the Mets and the Phillies at home, while traveling to Montreal and Florida.

Oh, and one other thing - one of those delightful scheduling vagaries that are commonplace now that everyone plays an unbalanced schedule - the Angels don't play Detroit at all until August 15. As bizarre as that kind of thing is, I think the advantage of playing more games in your division is far more important.

Posted 3:31 PM by Sean
The Mariners sign Jamie Moyer to a three-year deal. When it's done, Moyer will be forty-three years old.

Posted 12:25 PM by Sean
Remember when Phil Nevin hit .228 in 75 games for the Angels? In 1998? Well, Nevin just put the kibosh on a deal that would have sent him from the Padres to the Reds in a straight-up deal for Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, she is strange, no?

Posted 11:11 AM by Sean
Uh-oh. The Angels broke the Commissioner's Trophy. Actually, considering how it's configured, I'm amazed those pennants don't get snapped off every time there's a celebration. This time, six of them came loose. It's being repaired.

Posted 11:05 AM by Sean
Wow, Disney is raising the Angels' payroll from $62 million to $84 million? It's Bizzarro World! The article also includes a list of who's eligible for arbitration this year, and who's signed through what season.

Posted 9:36 AM by Sean
Okay, so Tom Glavine signs with the Mets, which, along with Thome going to the Phillies, prompts Rob Neyer to declare that the Braves' run of division titles is over. Me, I'll believe it when I see it. With the departure of Glavine, John Smoltz becomes the last player on the Braves' roster to have been there since 1991, the year they began their domination, meaning that the front office has managed to turn over nearly every single spot and still win. That's unbelievable, and enough to give the Braves the benefit of the doubt until someone proves otherwise on the field.

Meanwhile, Peter Gammons lists the potential free agents in 2003 and 2004. Not only do the Angels have no everyday players on the free agent market this year, they don't have any until 2004. So two years from now we have to worry about Troy Percival, Troy Glaus, and Garret Anderson. Percival will be 36, and hopefully Frankie Rodriguez will be ready by then anyway. Glaus and Anderson we'll have to see about. Of course, thinking that far ahead is a fool's game to the extent that there are so many potential intervening factors, but it's nice to have that security of not having to worry about losing pieces of the puzzle (except to injury or diminished skills, which are themselves enough to worry about).

One other thing I've been meaning to mention: when the 2003 season starts, Mike Scioscia will become only the second manager in Angels' history to have held that position on opening day for four years in a row. The first was Bill Rigney, their first manager, who helmed the Halos from 1961 to 1969. He'll also be the longest-tenured manager in the AL West, which is a pretty strange thought.

Posted 5:11 PM by Sean
So the Yankees' idea of a "youth movement" is to go after Bartolo Colon, who will be thirty years old in May. What will they do next, scour the Negro Leauges?

Seriously, Colon's a good pitcher and all, but the fact that he's a spring chicken compared to the rest of the Yankee starters says volumes about how much they're going to have to do to fix that rotation in the next couple of years.

Posted 9:07 AM by Sean
Darin Erstad needs hand surgery, but is expected to be fully recovered by the start of spring training. Sounds pretty routine. And apparently Mike Scioscia was going to go to med school if the whole baseball thing didn't work out - "He's hurt a bunch of different parts of his body before, so this is no different," he said.

Posted 1:37 PM by Sean
This story from the Associated Press, this column by Jayson Stark, and this other column by Jayson Stark bring back some memories. Essentially, all three describe how the Phillies made Thome feel wanted, so now there's lots and lots of love between them, so of course he'll be a great clubhouse presence and just what the youngsters in Philadelphia need to jell into a contender. To be honest, I don't care all that much what happens - if anything, I'm pulling for them slightly, if for no other reason than to make the NL East exciting - but damned if all this isn't eerily reminiscent of when the Angels signed Mo Vaughn. Mo, of course, is now persona non grata (more like persona maladicta, actually) in Anaheim, but when he was first signed it was tremendous - the Angels' first big free-agent signing since Reggie Jackson (just like this is the Phils' first since Pete Rose), a showing by ownership that they were willing to spend cash to build a winner, etc. All of the same things they're saying about Thome were said about Vaughn. To repeat: I wish Thome and the Phillies luck; it's just funny how things can change so quickly.

Posted 4:34 PM by Sean
The A's trade Billy Koch to the White Sox, and get Keith Foulke in the deal (there are other players, plus cash considerations, involved, but right now I'm just interested in the closers). Looking at their 2002 performances against the Angels, Koch had 7 saves, a .220 batting average against, and a 1.64 ERA with 9 strikeouts in 11 innings. Foulke only pitched 4.2 innings against Anaheim, allowing a .333 average against and a 3.86 ERA while striking out three and saving none (but not blowing any, either). Overall, Koch has been the more consistent closer, but Foulke has shown some talent and may improve. Just on the face of it, though, this is a good deal for the Angels, who won't have to deal with Koch nearly as often - both because he moves out of their division, and because they're not likely to enter the ninth trailing the White Sox as often as they will against the A's.

Posted 1:43 PM by Sean
Hey, thanks to John at TwinsGeek for linking to me, and welcome to those who've come here from there. If you haven't seen TwinsGeek, check it out - I want Purgatory Online to be like that when it grows up. Thanks also to Doug for letting me know about TwinsGeek in the first place.

For folks just visiting for the first time, I try to post at least once a day. Most of the posts are bite-sized, but occasionally I'll post something longer (like my post about going to Game 7 of the Series this year, or watching the Game 6 comeback, both of which are archived). Thanks for visiting!

Posted 9:17 AM by Sean
Scott Spiezio, David Eckstein, and Adam Kennedy will be making guest appearances on an as-yet-unscheduled episode of She Spies, one of those really awful-looking independent shows you always see ads for during afternoon baseball games. They're playing members of a World Series championship team who moonlight as emergency medical technicians in the off-season. The show itself looks like a Charlie's Angels knock-off, isn't affiliated with a network (it's supposedly on in Dallas at midnight on Saturdays on NBC, but is on various other networks at various other times elsewhere), and is obviously pretty stupid. But it stars Natasha Henstridge! Why was I not informed of this before?

Posted 9:05 AM by Sean
You know, when I first saw this I ignored it, despite (probably because of) how completely stupid it was. But now, more than a month after the end of the World Series, ESPN's MLB page still has the following quote from Joe Morgan at the bottom:

"All the intentional walks ruined the World Series for me as well as for Barry Bonds. I asked him if he was having fun because of all the walks and he said he really wasn't. It's just a shame. (Former Astros manager Larry) Dierker started that process last year and everyone built on it. It's a black eye on baseball. I don't know how you can change it though. There is no way you can control it really. It's one of the shortcomings of the game."

Forgive us, Joe. We didn't know that the point of baseball was to provide fun for Barry Bonds. We were unaware that the team with the best single player was supposed to win. We were ignorant, O Maestro, of God's divine plan to bring you amusement.

Posted 4:35 PM by Sean
The Phillies give Jim Thome a six-year contract worth $85 million, with an option for a seventh year (the article doesn't say whose option, but implies it's the team's). This after signing David Bell for four years, and continuing to chase Tom Glavine. I know they want to build momentum going into their new ballpark in 2004, but what's going to happen to this team in three years when they have Bell and Thome, both of whome will be in their mid-thirties, and Glavine, who will be almost forty, gobbling up that much of their payroll?

Posted 4:27 PM by Sean
Doug Miller, who reports on the Angels for MLB.com, has an offseason column called "Miller's Mailbag" that has some interesting tidbits, among them the fact that the winning player's World Series share was $229,351 this year. Miller also thinks that Frankie Rodriguez will continue in the role of set-up man to Troy Percival, rather than being given a starting slot.

Given that this is a guy employed by MLB, writing on the MLB website, I don't know how much faith to put in what he says about certain things. Most of the time he seems pretty reasonable, but then there's this answer to a fan wanting to know if money concerns are going to be a factor in the clubhouse next year:

"The Angels are a unique team because they don't let any outside influences or non-baseball-related thoughts enter their minds once they get to the park to prepare for and play games. Don't expect that to change any time soon, especially with Mike Scioscia at the helm. The players understand that the money issues will take care of themselves. They'll arrive for Spring Training and get back to the business of defending a championship. They realize how fortunate they are to have the team makeup they've built, and they won't sacrifice that for petty concerns."

Look, I'd love to believe the Angels are above all of those "petty concerns," and in all honesty I think they really are pretty focused on baseball. But these days teams are lucky to have two or three guys who don't worry about what they're paid, let alone twenty-five. This doesn't make them bad people, just people. It's going to make Scioscia's job more interesting, that's for sure.

Posted 9:11 AM by Sean
Here's a list of people on this year's Hall of Fame ballot. Slow year. I'd vote for Lee Smith, and maybe Eddie Murray, but that's probably it. When I have a little more time, I'll write about the Hall some more - it's a pretty interesting subject, and my life's ambition is to one day be the head librarian there.

Posted 12:55 PM by Sean
According to this post on the Angels message boards, a season-long retrospective is coming out on DVD in two weeks. This is the only mention I've seen of such a thing, but it's cool if it's true. I'm still making my CD, though.

Posted 9:30 AM by Sean
The 2002 World Series DVD is available. I'll get it, of course (probably after Christmas), along with a bunch of other overpriced swag from the Angels' web site. I'd really like to see a full-season retrospective, because some of the games during the season were just amazing. There were probably a dozen times I went to bed grinning like an idiot because they'd managed to come from behind when they looked done for.

Fortunately, I subscribe to MLB's streaming radio broadcasts. This is actually a pretty great deal if you follow a team that doesn't get broadcast in your home market - $14.95 buys a whole season of access to the radio broadcasts of every team. The stream is very slightly delayed (maybe 30 seconds), but how cool is it to be able to listen to any broadcast for any game? This year, I got to listen to Ernie Harwell do a couple of Tigers games, I heard an Expos broadcast in French, and, of course, lots and lots of Angels games (until I subscribed to the cable package for the second half of the season). Plus, they're archived, so you can go back and listen to any game. My favorite so far, I think, has been listening to the Twins' broadcasters react to Adam Kennedy's third home run in Game 5 of the ALCS - the Twins had just taken the lead in the previous half-inning, and Kennedy's shot had Kent Hrbek shouting "No! God, NO!"

So I think that one of my off-season projects will be to find a way to record streaming audio and compile my own damn highlight CD.

Posted 10:03 AM by Sean
The Mets take some steps toward pegging ticket prices to demand. The Cubs announced a similar plan last week. If this keeps up, Fidel Castro will be the very last person on the planet not on a college campus to believe in the labor theory of value.

Posted 9:54 AM by Sean
Has Peter Gammons turned into Andy Rooney? The cranky ol' sumbitch lists 25 things to change about baseball, and it's pretty clear that he's got about 20 too many. Do they pay him by the word? How else to explain the fact that #1 is "Teams that allow public relations to dictate personnel and organizational decisions" and #24 is "we need stricter consequences for an intentional walk?" In other words, "listening to the fans is stupid, except when they want to see someone pitch to Barry Bonds."

Posted 9:16 AM by Sean
I'll go out on a limb and say the new Canadian Baseball League will work, at least for a while. Everything about it seems designed to be a blend of minor-league atmosphere and Canada's famous struggle for cultural identity: salary caps (and floors), games played Thursday-Sunday only, a minimum of Canadian players for each team. It's interesting that they're directly competing with minor league baseball in at least a couple of cities, and I have to imagine they'll draw pretty well just out of national pride for the first season.

Posted 9:09 AM by Sean
Jesse Orosco will pitch for the Padres next year, at age 46. Good for him, I guess. But not so good for the Padres - Orosco pitched a total of 27 innings last year, because the Dodgers used him as their left-handed specialist (much like the Angels used Schoeneweis in the playoffs). Is it really wise to use a roster spot like this if you're not going to contend? I can definitely see a team needing someone like Orosco if they're going to compete this year (and if Orosco can keep pitching effectively to lefties), but this is more like putting a racing stripe on a Yugo.

Posted 8:53 AM by Sean
If you're ever stuck for a party game, try spot the biggest lie in this story about the fight David Wells was involved in last September. Here's my favorite:

"When Wells got up to go to the rest room, Yeckinevich said, the pitcher stopped at the adjacent booth where the men were seated and said, 'Enough is enough. Kindly leave my mother out of this. Say what you want to about me.'"

David Wells, Christ figure.

Posted 9:27 AM by Sean
It's looking more likely that the Expos will play up to 20 home games in Puerto Rico next year. If the article is right, though, there's not much of an impetus to put them there permanently, and beginning in 2004 they'll be somewhere like Charlotte, Portland, or D.C. So what's the point of playing 20 games in Puerto Rico instead of, say, Charlotte, Portland, or D.C. (or all three?). You'd think that after the disaster that is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, MLB would be careful about where they moved teams...

Posted 3:18 PM by Sean
It looks like the biggest challenge facing Mike Scioscia in 2003 is going to be keeping everyone happy with their roles on the team. Case in point: Fullmer wants to play every day. I can't blame him - up until this year, he's been a solid, if not spectacular, DH as an everyday player. The problem is, Shawn Wooten has hit lefties very, very well, and it seems obvious that a Fullmer/Wooten platoon is the way to go, statistcially speaking. Kennedy and Gil have both also expressed a desire to play full-time, making the second-base platoon unstable as well (actually, Kennedy showed a lot of improvement against lefties throughout 2002 and could probably start full-time, but then Gil would definitely demand a trade and the Angels would lose a great bench player). Toss in the already-discussed Schoeneweis situation, and it starts to look like it's pretty important for Scioscia to defuse all this before it gets out of control.

Posted 8:59 AM by Sean
One other thing about the AL MVP race. According to the official results, every one of the 28 voters had Rodriguez on their ballots, and 27 of the 28 put him in the top 4. If the thinking is that he shouldn't win because he played on a team that wasn't in contention, why put him on the ballot at all? Why is it okay for him to be, say, more valuable than Garret Anderson or Alfonso Soriano, both of whom were instrumental in their teams making the playoffs, but not Tejada? If Tejada's numbers looked like Soriano's, would the fact that the Rangers were a last place team cease to matter? The whole thing is so arbitrary. Just give it to the best player and be done with it.

Posted 3:43 PM by Sean
To finally solve a question that came up a few weeks ago, it looks like Adam Kennedy got his 0.2 innings as a center fielder this year in this game, a 10-inning loss at Minnesota. I remember this one: the Angels blew a five run lead and used pretty much everyone on the bench. When the Twins scored the winning run, the defensive alignment was Pote pitching, Molina (replacing Fabregas) catching, Erstad (replacing Spiezio, who replaced Fullmer) at first, Spiezio (replacing Kennedy) at second, Nieves at short, Glaus at third, Anderson in left, Kennedy (replacing Erstad) in center, and Ramirez (replacing Palmeiro) in right.

Posted 3:26 PM by Sean
The ESPN list of top 50 free agents includes nary an Angel. Every one of the everyday guys is coming back. I think the only three free agents are Dennis Cook, who will probably retire, Orlando Palmeiro, and Alex Ochoa. Palmeiro and Ochoa were both valuable off the bench this year, and we'll need them or guys like them, but overall the 2003 lineup will look a lot like 2002. Even the platoons - Kennedy/Gil and Fullmer/Wooten - will remain intact, barring off-season injuries.

On the pitching side, the Angels will almost certainly try to snag some left-handed relief, since Scott Shoeneweis is their only lefty in the bullpen, and he's not happy about relieving in the first place. There are some pretty scary candidates out there (I'm looking at you, Graeme Lloyd), but Mike Stanton, Felix Heredia, and Mike Remlinger are all available. They'll all be multi-million per year guys, though, and I have no idea what management's philosophy on taking on additional payroll will be. Considering that Disney is still trying to sell the team, it's probably unlikely.

Posted 1:52 PM by Sean
AL Gold Gloves announced. The Angels had two: Bengie Molina at catcher and Darin Erstad in the outfield. Erstad is a no-brainer, now that he's gotten some media exposure, but I'm surprised that Molina beat out Ivan Rodriguez, simply because Rodriguez is so much better known. Not that Molina doesn't deserve it - he's been far and away the best defensive catcher in the AL this year - but I suspect that the recent media knock on Rodriguez as being past his prime and injury prone had a lot to do with this.

I haven't seen any vote totals, but I'd be interested to see where Spiezio ended up. His defense at first this year saved the Angels pretty often; one of the reasons they were able to get away with having Eckstein's weak arm at short was Spiezio's skill receiving the ball at first. He also made some amazing plays on line drives that would have gotten past a lot of other guys. Looking at the statistics, Spiezio had a better fielding percentage, range factor, and zone rating than did Olerud, but Olerud played more innings. Plus, when was the last time you heard someone talk about range factor or zone rating? Even ESPN has the range factors screwed up - either all the decimals are in the wrong place or the formula is missing a factor.

Posted 1:35 PM by Sean
Felipe Alou to manage the San Francisco Giants. Kind of a shock - I hadn't heard his name mentioned at all. Then again, I haven't been keeping much of an ear to the ground about this. The total of my thoughts on the Giants' managerial opening has been "Dusty Baker is going to manage the Cubs? To atone for what?"

Posted 2:27 PM by Sean
Last of the awards: Tejada beats out A-Rod. The Dallas Morning News's Evan Grant voted for Tejada, and explains why. Now, I'm not saying he doesn't have good reasons, but it's a wee bit disingenuous of him to quote the first two sentences of the ballot as evidence of the award's lack of guidelines, but leave out the portion that defines "actual value of a player to his team" as "strength of offense and defense."

I forgot who originally suggested it, but I once read an article arguing in favor of an Academy Awards-style presentation of the BBWAA hardware. As long as you're going to give these awards, you might as well go all the way and actually inject some drama into them. It'd also be a great opportunity to recap the season, honor Hall of Famers who've passed away, and just generally promote the sport. So look for it to happen around the same time Barry Bonds buys ice cream sundaes for everyone in the press corps.

Anyway, today is the first day free agents can negotiate and sign with teams. Jim Thome is expected to go to the Phillies or re-up with the Indians fairly quickly. Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux are the other big names out there, but they'll both probably take a while to make up their minds.

Posted 3:01 PM by Sean
Interesting tidbit from this Jim Caple story at ESPN: if you turned all of Bonds's hits into strikeouts (or any kind of outs for that matter), his on-base percentage would still be higher than Alfonso Soriano's.

Posted 2:55 PM by Sean
"Duh" moment of the year: Bonds is NL MVP.

Posted 9:36 AM by Sean
Barry Zito wins the AL Cy Young. Mike Wells, of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, is quoted as saying that "Pedro cashed it in by not playing the last week of the season," referring to Martinez's seeming refusal to risk injury in what he called "meaningless games." I'd forgotten about that. At the time, the Red Sox were still mathematically alive, and the Angels were struggling. A good argument for Zito, I'd say, especially since a good chunk of the difference in their innings pitched was at Pedro's option, rather than because of injury or circumstance.

Posted 12:05 PM by Sean
Matt Szefc makes the case for Barry Zito as AL Cy Young. This one's weird: Szefc argues that, because Zito pitched more games against over-.500 opponents, he should get the nod over Pedro Martinez. But then he presents numbers demonstrating that Zito was substantially worse against those opponents than Martinez (Zito 18 starts, 3.66 ERA; Martinez 13 starts, 2.14 ERA). Zito is clearly the beneficiary of starts against bad teams here. Granted, he had five more starts in which to be roughed up by good teams, but Martinez's ERA against good teams was actually slightly better than his ERA against the sub-.500s. I think that's kind of a wash, then - sure, Martinez might have had worse numbers if he's pitched the same schedule, but there's absolutely no evidence for it.

Lowe, meanwhile, does show a benefit from pitching against weaker teams. Given that his ERA and IPs are very similar to Zito's, and his strikeouts are substantially less (and yes, okay, I admit strikeouts should be a factor too since they're the only form of out that the pitcher gets unassisted by his defense), I can't see voting for Lowe over Zito.

So it comes down to Zito or Martinez. Zito's ERA was 2.75, about 22% worse than Martinez's 2.26. Zito's IPs, however, were 229.1, 15% more than Martinez's 199.1. Martinez had a 31% edge in strikeouts, 239-182. The question is, how do we weigh these? Would you rather have a guy who pitches very well for a little longer, or a guy who pitches brilliantly for a little less?

It's very close. Durability is important because it provides consistency and doesn't require much juggling from the manager. But let's say Zito pitched well enough to win an expected 20 games in 230 innings, while Martinez pitched well enough to win an expected 20 games in 200, then broke down and had to be replaced with the biggest scrub in the bullpen, who threw the next thirty innings with a 7.50 ERA. You've got to figure that there's at least some chance that, during that stretch, the Red Sox will pick up a win or two, right? So after 230 innings, the Red Sox would actually be +1 or +2 compared to the A's.

The problem is applying this to the current question. I don't know if I've ever seen a study correlating ERA to expected wins, although I'm sure one exists. I don't have time at the moment to look for it, but I will in the next few days. I suspect, however, that when all the math is done, Martinez's 22% advantage in ERA outweighs Zito's 15% advantage in innings pitched, or, at the very least, it's close enough that Martinez's higher strikeout total would provide the tiebreaker. So, if I had a vote, I'd...well, I'd have thought about it in time to do the math. Provisionally, though, I'd say Martinez.

You won't hear me complain if they pick Zito, though, and I expect they probably will based on durability, his performance over the past two years, and his team making the playoffs.

Posted 11:25 AM by Sean
The L.A. Times says the Angels have offered contract extensions to the entire coaching staff. I wonder how long they're for? Obviously, I hope they all re-up, but Roenicke, Black, and Griffin have all been mentioned as prime candidates to manage their own teams in the near future.

Posted 1:35 PM by Sean
Mike Scioscia is the AL Manager of the Year, and rightly so. Bringing a team back from a 6-14 start to finish 99-63 is pretty impressive, moreso considering that they were picked to finish last by almost everybody.

In the NL, Tony La Russa gets the honors. Makes sense to me - it seemed like he had to do a lot more managing than most this year, with deaths, disablements, and other assorted disasters going on in St. Louis.

Posted 2:54 PM by Sean
Randy Johnson wins his fourth straight Cy Young Award. Talk about your no-brainers. There are exactly two statistics that really matter when you talk about starting pitchers: ERA and innings pitched. How well the guy pitched, and how often.

I think a lot of people still look at strikeouts, walks, and opponents batting average, but to me those are just indicators of how a pitcher goes about compiling a low ERA; voting on those is like saying that "Dogs Playing Poker" is a superior painting because the paint is durable.

And wins, of course, are irrelevant. Giving up three earned runs per nine innings does not suddenly become more impressive if your teammates score four. It's an individual award, and statistics that depend on how the rest of the team does shouldn't be evaluated. Somewhere, someone is looking at a pitcher's low ERA and so-so won-lost record and thinking, "that guy pitches just well enough to lose, he doesn't know how to get it done." That person should take up watching football.

In a related vein, we're being treated yet again this year to a discussion of what the "Most Valuable Player" means. Here are the instructions from the Baseball Writers Association of America:

Dear Voter:

There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier.

The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:

1. Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.
2. Number of games played.
3. General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.
4. Former winners are eligible.
5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your selections, from 1 to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot.

Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, and that includes pitchers and designated hitters.

Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration.

Okay. The controversy stems from the argument that the best player in the league, who everyone pretty much agrees is Alex Rodriguez, is not necessarily the most valuable player in the league, because he played on a last place team, and if you took him away, they would still have been a last place team, so how much value did he add?

I used to argue that "Most Valuable Player" didn't necessarily refer to the player's value to his team, but rather to the league - value was defined as how much better he made his team, plus how much better the other teams would be if that person played for them, too. But after seeing the actual instructions, it's clear that you're supposed to vote for "the most valuable player in each league to his team." Well, fine. But then the instructions go on to define value as "strength of offense and defense," which sure sounds a lot like "best player" to me.

In any event, the AL MVP will be announced on November 12.

Posted 9:32 AM by Sean
Mets owner Fred Wilpon is thinking of terminating Mo Vaughn's contract because Mo is overweight. Dude, he just came off six months of playing professional baseball! If he's overweight now, what's he gonna look like in February?

Posted 9:29 AM by Sean
The Yankees are raising ticket prices, and blaming the new labor deal. It's become increasingly in vogue among baseball writers to argue that using increased costs as an excuse for raising ticket prices is a sham. The argument goes like this: fans only care what they're spending for a ticket, not how much profit the team makes. Therefore, teams charge what people are willing to spend, which is completely independent from whatever it might cost the team to produce their product. To put it another way, teams would never lower their prices if their costs went down, so why should it work in reverse?

This is a pretty argument. It's also wrong. For starters, it assumes that baseball teams are completely rational economic actors, which, to make an understatement, they are not. Baseball teams' attitudes toward the law of supply and demand needs no better illustration than their ticket prices for various games. By and large, most teams charge the same price for a particular seat regardless of demand; seeing a mid-week game in Wrigley Field against the Padres is going to cost you the same as seeing a Saturday afternoon game against the Cardinals (assuming you sit in the same place, of course), despite the fact that the former won't be sold out and the latter will be. While some teams (including the Yankees) discount some tickets, so far they've made only baby steps toward pegging price to demand.

Secondly, regardless of what should be true in theory, cost is almost always included in pricing models anyway. When you run a red light and hit some little old lady in her Stutz Bearcat, your insurance rates go up because the insurance company suddenly has to pay on your account, and isn't making as much profit (and yes, I know that this argument can be turned around to say that what's really happening is your willingness to pay has increased, but in the case of insurance you HAVE to pay at all times because the law says so). When your wife tells you she's pregnant, you start thinking about asking for a raise, or finding a new job. Most baseball teams are owned by conglomerates of very rich men who have bought baseball teams not because it's a great monetary investment but because it adds to their prestige, but they DON'T want to be hemorrhaging money. The important thing to them is not making wheelbarrowsful of cash, but having a predictable bottom line. So when costs go up, ticket prices also go up.

All of which is not to say that the owners aren't weasels. They are. They're even weasels on this issue, because they manipulate costs like there's no tomorrow, such as paying themselves huge "consulting fees" so that they'll show losses. It's just that the true weaseling occurs at a deeper level than this "rising costs have nothing to do with rising ticket prices" stuff.

Posted 4:17 PM by Sean
My Game 7 post is complete. Damn, it's long.

I'll be getting back to blogging now, as opposed to the journal-style entry about Game 7.

Posted 9:14 AM by Sean
I've reinstated the archives (minus most of the posts from before the playoffs started), because it turns out I'm a wordy dude when I want to be, and I don't want more than 20 posts on the front page.

Posted 2:54 PM by Sean
Part 2 of the Game 7 experience is posted below, continuous with part 1 as part of the 10/30/2002 5:30:16 post.

Posted 5:30 PM by Sean
"What'd you pay for your tickets?" was a popular question. It wasn't delivered in a nosy, how-much-can-you-afford kind of way, but with a wry, morbid curiosity: how much did the bastards get you for? Everyone who asked knew that we who had waited all this time were not about to let a small thing like finances or an economic slowdown stop us from seeing the Angels in the World Series; whatever we had on us, we would pay, and commisserate quietly together about scalpers later. And so when I'd answer, modestly, "face," their expressions would be of satisfaction that someone, at least, had gamed the ticket brokers out of a few bills. It wasn't until I told them that I'd actually gotten through to Ticketmaster to obtain my ticket that their faces took on looks of disbelief. "Really?" they'd say. "Wow. You're the only one I know."

I met Irene in Albuquerque. Irene's late husband, Don, had covered the Angels for thirty years for a newspaper in Long Beach, and now she lives about ten minutes from the stadium. On the ride to Phoenix she told me about meeting Gene Autry, Bo Belinsky, Dean Chance, and others of the early teams. She and her family had been to Games 1 and 2, as well as games from the ALDS and ALCS, but couldn't scare up four together for Game 7, and decided to watch it together in front of the TV instead of separately at the ballpark. Irene had seen hundreds of Angels games, but nothing like what had been happening for the last few weeks. "It's so loud," she said. "And everyone is wearing red!" The last time she was there, the line to get into the team store - where a jersey costs $80, mind you - was over three hours long.

In line to check in for the Phoenix to Orange County leg of the trip, I met a tall, athletic guy, maybe 25 years old, who had just run from another gate to catch this flight. He turned out to be Wes, a buddy of John Lackey's who had played with him in Boise, short-season ball, 1999. Lack had called him the night before, he said, in Minnesota, and told him to get to Anaheim ASAP--his old buddy had been tapped to pitch Game 7 of the World Series. Later, after the flight landed, we split a cab to the ballpark, and he told me that he and Lackey had both been starting pitchers in Boise--they would have been about 21 then--and would go out after their starts to eat pizza, drink beer, and fantasize about making it to the Series together. I checked out his stats after I got home--it seemed impolite to ask at the time--and damned if he didn't have a great year for Boise, good enough to get promoted a couple of times through the advanced-A California League and into Anaheim's Double-A affiliate in Arkansas. But then, he said, "a couple of surgeries later..." And he shrugged, because that's baseball. He and his reconstructed physique spent this past summer in the independent Northern League, playing for the St. Paul Saints, but for now, by God, he was going to the World Series, just like his friend promised.

I got to the stadium at 2:00, half an hour before the gates were due to open and two and a half hours before the game started. The parking lot was half full. A van from one of the local radio stations had attracted a crowd; interns were chucking free red T-shirts out of the open back doors. California law allows for ticket scalping, but prohibits it on the grounds of the stadium, so there were only a few guys wandering around with thousand-yard stares and carefully modulated voices, asking if anyone had an extra ticket. No one did.

The gates opened just after 2:30. Security was surprisingly light - purses and packages were inspected cursorily, but since I had neither I went through an "express gate." In the five minutes it took me to find the main souvenir store inside the stadium, it had already filled and shoppers were being allowed access only when others were exiting. The line wrapped around the side of the building. Since I never have to wait to get onto the store's web site, I moved on.

One bratwurst later, I was making a circuit of the stadium. Edison Field is nice - not spectacular, like Kaufmann Stadium in Kansas City, or stuffed with amusements, like Minute Maid in Houston, but much better than, say, the Metrodome or old Fulton County Stadium. It looks like what it is: a multipurpose stadium that's been renovated to make it baseball-only, with some pre-fab rocks and fountains placed past the left-center field wall to give it some character. In the outfield concourse, there are the ubiquitous "see how fast you can throw the ball" and "see how far you can hit the (virtual) ball" machines, only no one was playing them, because how many kids can afford $150 a ticket?

On the way to my seat, I looked for a beer and was somewhat disappointed to find nothing in the way of stuff from local breweries. Fortunately, I spotted the Heineken logo on a nearby cart. That'll do in a pinch, I though. Heineken's fine. Heineken's drinkable. Heineken's...nine dollars?

Nothing like a cold Budweiser at the ball game.

My seat turned out to be in the second deck, which is the same height the luxury boxes have. My section had an "attendant," who took food orders and entered them into an electronic handheld device, where the fans' doganacokes were transmitted to the ether, displayed on a screen in a nearby concession stand, and delivered by runners. Unfortunately, I was also as far from the plate as it's possible to get without actually being in the outfield - home plate, the left field foul pole, and I lined up straight. But it was in the stadium.

I read from my offical World Series program ($10) for a while, and every time I looked up it seemed like someone had turned on another tap. The stadium was 5% full. I read the Commissioner's welcome message. The stadium was 15% full. I checked out the 2002 American League highlights. The stadium was 50% full. Meanwhile, banner-pulling airplanes filled the sky, to the point that I suspected some air traffic controller was pulling special duty from a box on the roof. I counted nine airplanes, two helicopers, and the blimp in the sky at the same time, not counting what I couldn't see behind me.

To help pass the time, I inflated my official-issue World Series ThunderStix. They were giving these things out free at the gates - essentially long, oblate balloons you inflate with straws, ThunderStix, when banged together, make a noise like a bucket of turkey guts dropped onto a plastic sheet from five stories up. Prior to showing up at the ballpark, my biggest concern about ThunderStix was that they'd block my view of the game, but now it was clear that I was going to be in serious danger of hearing loss comparable to someone who's stood underneath a 747 during takeoff or been to a Blue Oyster Cult concert.

I was sitting on the aisle, and eventually my neighors arrived - a father and his son, maybe ten years old. The boy had just come from watching batting practice up close, and had gotten some autographs on a ball he'd brought. "I got Adam Kennedy, Benji Gil, and Tim Salmon, this time," he said. This time. It wasn't a big deal, getting these guys to sign a baseball. It's what baseball players do, right?

Finally, the festivities got rolling. Melissa Etheridge sang the National Anthem. The obligatory big-game flyby of jets happened. And then, the weirdest thing happened: a baseball game started.

It sounds stupid, but one of the strangest things about the whole trip was how normal the game itself was. We tend to think of Game 7 of the World Series as the biggest possible moment in sports (stop emailing me, World Cup fans, I don't care). The crowds are larger and louder, the culmination of thousands of games played during the season turns on a few inches here or there. Accomplishments in that environment are mythic. For all that, however, it's still just a baseball game. Homers aren't worth 6 runs, you still get one out for three strikes, nobody gains the power of flight. Nothing happened in Game 7 that you would think twice about if you saw it in June. Sure, Darin Erstad made a terrific catch on a sinking line drive to rob David Bell of a leadoff hit in the top of the 5th, but Darin Erstad makes those plays all the time. The juxtaposition of these perfectly ordinary plays with the never-before-seen (in Anaheim) Game 7 atmosphere made things surreal.

Don't, however, think that just because the game itself was normal it wasn't a great game to watch. Aside from the fans and the fanfare, the Giants and Angels played a terrific, tense game that came down to the last batter. I knew from talking to Lackey's minor-league buddy that he had gone to Scioscia and asked for the ball, a sign that he had the confidence and wouldn't be rattled early. Hernandez had looked bad in game 3, and looked bad in the first inning, too, and the crowd was on its feet as he walked two to put David Eckstein in scoring position with one out. But then Eckstein was doubled off second on Anderson's liner to center, and suddenly I knew what "taking the crowd out of the game" meant.

Bonds led off the second, and suddenly no one was making noise. The entire crowd was braced for another crushed ball, and I remember thinking only that Lackey had done a good job to make sure Bonds didn't come up with men on base. But then he lined out, and it was like a call from the governor at 11:59. In his subsequent at-bats, Bonds would single, pop up, and walk, and each time he reached the plate his mystique was diminished a little more. When he drew a walk in the eighth inning, with two out and nobody on, the crowd cheered wildly: with four outs left to get and a three-run lead, Barry Bonds had been eliminated as a factor.

Hernandez was terrible. Even from my seat, I could tell he was nervous, not hitting his spots. I kept expecting Baker to start the bullpen, but even after giving up back-to-back hits to Eckstein and Erstad to start the third, all was quiet down there. When Hernandez hit Salmon to load the bases, it was obvious that good things were about to happen for the Angels.

Anderson's bases-clearing double chased Hernandez (he was actually left in for one more batter, to intentially walk Troy Glaus), and then the game really got good. On the brink of being blown out, Chad Zerbe got the Giants out of the two-on, no-out jam and kept them in the game. I've read a lot of stories by people who called Game 7 "anticlimactic" because the winning runs were scored in the third and there wasn't the dramatic comeback win featured in Game 6. Nobody in that stadium, however, thought that the game was anticlimactic; I suspect that every single one of the 40,000+ fans in attendance would have been surprised to learn that Anderson's double in the third would score the last runs of the ball game. With six innings of Bonds, Kent, Sanders, et al coming up, I looked on the Angels' failure to score Anderson from second as a potentially devastating loss.

In fact, that would be pretty much it for the Anaheim offense. Aside from a double by Molina in the 6th, the Giants' relief pitching shut down the Angels' bats. Kirk Rueter, in particular, pitched four scoreless innings, and I'll be damned if I can figure out how. One of the really nice features of Edison Field is that they have the pitcher's total pitch count, balls, and strikes posted on the scoreboard at all times, and Rueter was throwing very nearly as many balls as strikes. Ordinarily, that's not such a good sign, but in this case he was getting the Angels to chase balls out of the strike zone, or look for balls away when he was coming in, or something. I haven't had a chance to watch the videotape from those innings yet, but for four innings it frustrated the hell out of me.

Meanwhile, Lackey was starting to wobble. In the fifth, he looked like he was struggling, throwing a lot of balls down and away, and it looked like it was only a matter of time before he started walking guys, which would force him to throw over the plate more, which would let the Giants start hitting the ball. Erstad saved his bacon with his catch to lead off the inning, though, and Lackey struck out Pedro Feliz (who may be the worst hitter ever to DH in a World Series game). He walked Lofton, and the bullpen was up - I could see Donnelly and Schoeneweis getting ready - but then Aurilia flied out to end the inning, and that was it for Lackey.

Donnelly kept us on the edge of our seats in the 6th and 7th. According to the game log, the 6th looked like the bigger threat, what with Snow on second and Santiago on third with two outs, but in all honesty when Baker pinch hit Goodwin for Sanders it was like that call from the governor again. Goodwin dutifully struck out.

It was the one-two-three seventh that was really the adventure. Bell led off by hitting a 2-2 pitch into deep left and I was positive it was gone, but Anderson, backed up to the wall, nonchalantly settled under it for the out. Feliz again struck out, and then Lofton hit another bomb - but again, it was just shy of home run power, backing Salmon up to the right-field wall. The woman in the seat in front of me turned around. "I hate that Donnelly," she said.

During the Angels' half of the seventh, I watch Frankie Rodriguez--"K-Rod," they call him in Anaheim--warm up. My seat looked right down on the bullpen, so I had seen Lackey, Donnelly, Schoeneweis, and now Rodriguez warm up. While the other three had looked like they were working the kinks out, however, Rodriguez looked not just ready to go, but ready to dominate. The ball had such incredible speed and movement on it that it looked like someone had given him a golf ball to throw. I knew Bonds was due up third in the eighth, but, looking at Rodriguez warm up, I didn't think there was any way anyone was going to be on base when he did.

I was right. Rodriguez is 20 (or so he says, anyway), and maybe that's just too young to know you're supposed to lose control in such situations. But K-Rod gave Aurilia and Kent no chance. Aurilia went down on three pitches, Kent on four.

I HAVE watched the videotape of this inning, and can say that Rodriguez certainly looked like he was pitching to Bonds - just not giving him anything to hit. I don't think he was trying to pitch around Bonds, exactly, but gave him pitches that were just bad enough to get him out if he swung. Bonds has a preternatural eye at the plate, though, and walked, which no one in the stadium thought was a bad thing. And then, faced with someone who wasn't Barry Bonds, Rodriguez went right after Santiago and struck him out on four pitches.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of a good closer to a baseball fan's psyche, and Troy Percival is a terrific closer. He came to the Angels in 1995, served as Lee Smith's setup man, and has been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball ever since. But Lord God he does like to make things interesting, and this especially is where I don't understand why anyone thought the game was anticlimactic: it came down to a two-on, two-out at-bat, Troy Percival vs. Kenny Lofton. Lofton is not some banjo-hitting callup; he bats leadoff and hit 11 home runs this year.

When he connected with the first pitch, it took about two seconds to realize that it was going to stay in the park, and it wasn't until that moment that I really believed that the Angels were going to win the World Series. Throughout the eighth and ninth, knowing that Rodriguez and Percival were what they were, I was half-expecting a terrorist attack, or asteroid, or some damn thing. "The Angels win the World Series" seemed like such an improbable thing; even when the organization spent decades trying with increasing desperation to "win one for the cowboy," "one" referred to an American League pennant, not the World Series. But when I saw that ball was going to come down, and saw Erstad waving his arms, I had just one thought left:

Please, God, don't let Ochoa go for it too.

A second later, Ochoa had pulled up and was watching Erstad make the Angels World Champs. I needed about six pairs of eyes, then. I wanted to see Erstad and Ochoa sprint in from the outfield, Molina leap into Percival's arms, Spiezio and Glaus rush in from the corners, Anderson break into his first grin of the season, and every section of the stadium go bananas.

They did a remarkable job setting up the stage on the field for the presentation of the trophies; I heard that they had actually set everything up in the Giants' clubhouse the night before when it looked like they were going to win, and just as quickly tore it down when they didn't. Within ten minutes, Jeanne Zelasko was introducing Bud Selig, who was roundly booed, and Michael Eisner, who was booed a little less, and then Scioscia was hoisting the trophy over his head and the place just exploded.

I left about an hour later, after watching Salmon take a victory lap with the trophy, Glaus receive his MVP award, and Ben Weber emerge from the dugout to spray champagne on the fans who had stayed to watch a seemingly endless procession of interviews with David Eckstein on the field. My hotel was about a mile and a half away, and I don't think I went twenty feet at any given time without being honked at by somebody who had spotted my cap and red shirt.

The next morning, I made the Orange County-Phoenix-El Paso-Dallas return home. I left Orange County at 6:45 a.m., and my plane landed in Dallas at 3:20 p.m. But I have no idea when I'll come back to Earth.

Posted 3:47 PM by Sean
First of all, the dog is going to need therapy.

The day the playoffs started, I bought a bottle of champagne and told myself that, once the Angels' season was over, I'd drink to the fact that after sixteen years they'd finally managed to make it in again. I wasn't thinking about a World Series; I was mostly thinking that they needed to go after a split in Yankee Stadium, then come back and get a split at home, then roll the dice in Game 5. I was thinking that it would be nice if they could do a little damage, win a couple of games, make everyone who expected the Yankees to roll into an ALCS showdown with the A's realize that the Angels weren't your typical wild-card team; they went 93-49 over the last 142 games of the season and were every bit as good as the Yankees and definitely could contend with the A's. But FOX kept showing that graphic to tell all of us at home that the Yankees had playoff experience - Lord, yes, scads of playoff experience - and the Angels players had a sum total of two games in the playoffs, both by Kevin Appier.

Funny thing, though: four games later, the bottle was still getting cold, Derek Jeter was staring morosely over the bullpen railing, and the Angels had won their first postseason series, ever. Mike Scioscia was an idiot for 24 hours after not using Percival to protect a lead in the eighth inning of Game 1, then magically became some kind of genius after the team won the next three. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Twins were everybody's darlings, beating the A's in five games. The A's were the overwhelming favorite of baseball writers everywhere going into the postseason - they had Zito, Mulder, Hudson, Tejada, Justice, and on, and on....and, oops, out. Gone in the first round for the third straight year, the A's had a spectacular second half of the season that encompassed a 20-win streak that overshadowed the brilliant baseball being played by the Angels during the same time period. That they could be knocked off by the Twins served to show that the Minnesotans, having escaped contraction, were rampaging towards their destiny and would not be denied.

Except then they were. Again faced with a team for whom the concept of home-field advantage was very real, the Angels split the first two games of the ALCS in the Twins' dingy rec room of a ballpark, came home, and swept all three in Anaheim. For the first time ever, I was able to say "the Angels won the pennant." By this time, the champagne had migrated to the back of the refrigerator. I could see the neck of the bottle behind the orange juice; if I shuffled the bread around I could see some of the label.

During the World Series, it just got worse. The fridge was full of take-out and cold cuts. There was no way I was cooking while the Angels were on. From Game 1 through Game 5, that bottle was invisible.

Not so in Game Six. The Giants jumped out to an early lead on a home run by Shawon Dunston--Shawon Dunston, for God's sake--and then another by Barry Bonds, who had proven and was proving that pitching to him and walking him were both losing propositions. By the seventh inning, it was 5-0. The Giants had it in the bag, and I was starting to think about pushing the cartons and packages out of the way, retrieving the bottle, and toasting the American League Champions. The Giants' bullpen was as competent as they come, and Robb Nen had been lights-out against the Angels. So when Spiezio lifted that three-run homer over Reggie Sanders's glove and into the fourth row of the right-field seats, I told myself that at least they'd made it interesting--but I didn't forget that bottle.

The top of the eighth came and went. Donuts, our shy yellow lab mix, came over to be petted. Darin Erstad came to the plate to hit against Tim Worrell, and I kept one eye on him and one eye on the dog. A ball. A strike. And then a swing, and a shot off the sweet part of the bat that raced for the right-field wall, and I was on my feet, screaming "get out of here!" Donuts, the ball, and all thoughts of that bottle of champagne disappeared at the same time.

Ersty's home run only made it 5-4, but after that the team was in full throat, baying for more hits, more runs, more games, more of this unbelievable season. Worrell threw ball one to Salmon, who then smacked a single into center field and was pulled for Chone Figgins, the fastest man on the team but a guy who had made multiple baserunning mistakes against the Twins in the ALCS. Garret Anderson fouled one off, then dropped a bloop down the left-field line that Bonds misplayed, Figgins goes to third, Anderson ends up on second. Dusty Baker pulls Worrell in favor of Nen, but by this time it's too late. The hit train has arrived. Glaus takes a 2-1into the gap in left center, Figgins and Anderson score, the Angels take the lead, and before anyone can even get nervous about a ninth-inning rally, Troy Percival has blown through Goodwin, Lofton, and Aurilia. Good night, see you tomorrow.

And when the Series is over, the dog will need therapy.

Posted 9:05 AM by Sean
I'm back. I'll be posting about games 6 and 7 later today; for now I'll just say that I made it to the game and it was incredible. Everyone should get to do that.

Posted 11:26 PM by Sean
Yes. We. Can.

I'll be in section 301, down the left-field line.

Posted 4:15 PM by Sean
Incidentally, I really do have a ticket to Game 7. Fortunately, I have a ticket voucher from Southwest Airlines that's good any time, so I didn't have to shell out for a plane ticket without knowing whether the game would be played. I just finished making reservations (which I can cancel at no penalty if there's no Game 7). Thanks to absurd laws governing flights from Love Field, however, my itinerary includes, tomorrow, departing at 9:20 Central Time, flying to Alburquerque, flying to Phoenix, and then flying to Orange County, arriving at 12:50 Pacific Time. My return, on Monday, puts me on a 6:45 a.m. flight out of Orange County, a stop in Phoenix, a plane change in El Paso, and a return to Dallas at 3:25. Needless to say, any updates after Game 7 will be delayed.

Posted 4:10 PM by Sean
Tonight, Game 6. Kevin Appier v. Russ Ortiz. Again. The last time this happened, we got an 11-10 slugfest. Tonight, well...

Appier says that he's identified a slight flaw in his mechanics from that 11-10 game, and that's good, I suppose, but I think that at this point just about every starter the Angels have is out of gas. There's really no reason to believe that Appier will be any more crisp this time around, just as there's no reason to believe Ortiz will, either. So this one will likely come down to a battle of the bullpens again, and the Angels can't rely on Weber, who has looked completely cashed in during his last two appearances. They can probably get some work out of Donnelly, Schoeneweis, Rodriguez, and Percival (especially Percival). But the Appier-Ortiz portion of the game could result in a swing of several runs either way. Dice-tossing time.

Posted 3:57 PM by Sean
Fresh on the heels of scolding Jason Christiansen (see below), Sandy Alderson gets on top of the children in the dugouts issue. Except, of course, he doesn't, not really. Essentially, it boils down to "keep a closer eye on the kids." If I was a Giants fan, I'd be thrilled that my manager is okay with dividing his time that way.

Posted 4:18 PM by Sean
Okay, now that all that bile is expelled, I'm going to take Dean Chance's advice and forget about it. Time to kick Russ Ortiz's ass tomorrow night.

Posted 4:15 PM by Sean
And now, a few words about the dumbest moments of this, or any, World Series. First of all, the entire idea of ranking baseball's most memorable moments is a concept of staggering doltishness to begin with. Why in God's name do we care what most people perceive as "most memorable?" What, exactly, do we do with that information? Is there some point to this, beyond demonstrating to the masses that baseball can put on pre-game festivities that are every bit as turgid and loud as the Super Bowl's?

Then again, judging from the reaction Pete Rose got, I suspect that the masses wouldn't know their asses from a hole in the ground if you gave them a textbook on telling them difference and sent them to an adult-education class. Rose bet on the Reds, a violation that carries an automatic punishment of being declared permanently ineligible, agreed to a settlement in which he agreed not to contest the ban, and is manifestly unrepentant about the whole thing. Nuts to Pete Rose.

And nuts to MLB, too, for delaying the start of this game until after 8:30 Eastern Time for this foolishness. Are they really so irony-impaired that they don't see anything wrong with letting this vapid twaddle ensure that millions of people who don't want to stay up until midnight won't see the end of the game? Better celebrate those memories, pal, 'cause you sure ain't gonna be making any new ones. If kids on the East Coast hadn't already been irretrievably lost to basketball and football, this had to have pushed them over the edge.

Finally, while we're on the subject of children, the daycare that is the Giants' dugout is ridiculous - and dangerous. J.T. Snow shouldn't have to worry about plucking the manager's three-year-old son out of danger as he crosses the plate.

Posted 3:32 PM by Sean
Ugh. See yesterday's entry.

See also the entry from Game 3, and substitute the word "wrong" for the word "right," and put the word "not" next to every verb.

Posted 2:37 PM by Sean
I've actually had this weblog since May, and wrote the occasional piece to post as a kind of experiment - do I want to write about baseball every day, or even every week? I've turned the archives off primarily because the previous postings were so sporadic that they're pretty much worthless - an Angels game here, an outbreak of steroids allegations there. Now, of course, with the Angels in their first-ever World Series, I wish I'd been more diligent about it all.

Right now, however, I'm reminded of one of the major reasons I have a hard time writing daily about this topic. When the Angels lose, it's a lot harder to relive it, drag out the mistakes and look at them in the sunshine (or in the fog, anyway - the weather here sucks right now). I'd really rather wait until there's good news.

Unfortunately, it was Giants 4, Angels 3 last night. This one hurt, for a lot of reasons. Obviously, being up 3-1 is a whole lot better than being tied 2-2, even if two of the last three are at home. And it's never pleasant to lose a three-run lead, even if two of the critical "hits" involved (Rueter and Lofton) were entirely matters of luck. Most frustrating, though, is the knowledge that the Angels shut down Barry Bonds to no avail. Of course, when you're talking about Bonds, "shut down" is a relative term, but in general they got away with walking him when they walked him, and got away with pitching to him when they pitched to him. That may not happen again.

There is one silver lining for me personally in all this - I have a ticket to Game 7. If it goes that far, I'll be flying to Anaheim Sunday to see my first postseason game, and my first game in Anaheim. I'm still rooting for the Angels in six.

Posted 3:52 PM by Sean
Tonight, it's John Lackey vs. Kirk Rueter. Lackey was a Godsend for the Angels, coming in around the middle of the year and going 9-4 after Schoeneweis was "demoted" to the bullpen (where he did quite well). He's been very consistent, in that he's never had a nuclear meltdown of a game, and usually works 6 innings or so with 2 or 3 earned runs.

Rueter, meanwhile, has also had a very good year, though he's looked vulnerable in the postseason. He's also the first left-hander the Giants have thrown at the Angels, and the Angels have been hell on lefties this year. The primary question for Scioscia in making out the lineup will be whether or not to replace Adam Kennedy at second base with Benji Gil - the two of them platooned during much of the year, but by the end Kennedy was hitting left-handers so well that he got the occasional start against them. Gil had a pinch-single last night, and I suspect Scioscia will start him, since this will leave him AK as an option in the late innings if Dusty Baker puts in a right-handed reliever (between Kennedy and Fullmer, who will also be on the bench, those are some pretty nice options).

Posted 3:38 PM by Sean
Newhan, incidentally, wrote a surprisingly good book about the Angels' history a couple of years ago. I say surprisingly merely because it's not a fluffy, rah-rah kind of history (then again, how could it be?), but rather a fairly sober assessment of their long and mostly tragic history up through the 1999 season. Newhan has been covering the Angels since their start in 1961, and was actually present for some pretty pivotal events in their history.

Posted 3:34 PM by Sean
Ross Newhan, in the L.A. Times, describes Bonds after last night's game:

"It was much later, as he stood at a locker protected from the media rabble by his black leather lounge chair and personal television, that Bonds was asked if he could take any satisfaction from the home run records he is in the process of setting or tying in this Series and postseason?

"'No,' he responded cryptically, turning then to what has been his mantra: 'I just want to win, I just want a World Series ring.'"

Really, Barry? No satisfaction? Is that why it took you almost as long to get to first base after your dinger as it took Tony Bennett to sing the first two bars of the National Anthem?

After three games, it seems as if the question being settled here is whether or not a group of extremely talented baseball players, playing as a team, can beat another group of talented players plus one superstar who happen to wear the same uniform (Bonds, you'll notice, wouldn't even deign to high-five his teammates during the introductions). Bonds does make a difference - without him in the mix, the Angels would be looking for the sweep tonight - but for all his moon-shot home runs, for all the respect he's given as the most fearsome offensive player of our lifetimes, his feats are merely marvels, not inspirations. Whereas the Angels, who have batted around six times now in twelve playoff games, are feeding off each other.

Posted 3:12 PM by Sean
Giants pitcher Jason Christiansen is in trouble with Major League Baseball for putting Darryl Kile's initials and uniform on his cap during the World Series. Kile, who died suddenly earlier this year and pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals, and Christiansen were teammates and friends. Sandy Alderson, who is MLB's Executive Vice President, and Bob Watson, who is in charge of discipline, went so far as to accost Christeansen in the dugout to tell him he couldn't wear the cap...despite that fact that Christiansen isn't on the World Series roster and won't even be playing.

Technically, of course, MLB is right that this violates the "one team, one uniform" policy. But that doesn't mean this isn't the basest, sorriest, most incompetent decision they could have made. No, you don't want everyone decorating their caps differently, but if a guy in the dugout wants to pay tribute to his dead friend, I think maybe you could have a little compassion and look the other way. I'm not as critical of a lot of MLB's actions as some - stopping the All-Star Game and ending it in a tie was absolutely the right decision, by the way - but they deserve every bit of bad press they're going to get over this.

Posted 2:58 PM by Sean
Oops. Benito Santiago is only 37. That's younger than Bonds. He just looks ancient.

Posted 2:56 PM by Sean
Angels 10, Giants 4. What can I say, except that the Angels did almost every single thing right last night. That was obviously true on offense - they stayed aggressive on the bases and hit line drives, took advantage of defensive alignments (the Erstad-Salmon double steal was particularly nice), and kept the pressure on until the last out was made. I actually wonder if the double steal was in some way related to Jeter's taking third in the ALDS - maybe Erstad recognized that the situation was similar.

It may be, however, that it was Scott Schoeneweis that gave the Angels the gift that keeps on giving last night. I thought he pitched very well, throwing ball one to a couple of hitters but never falling behind 2-0 or 3-1. In fact, he didn't throw very many pitches to any one batter, retiring six with only 16 pitches and letting Scioscia save Rodriguez, Weber, and Percival for tonight, while still having Schoeneweis himself available to pitch to Bonds in the late innings.

I suppose the bad news, if there is some, is that Lofton, Kent, and Aurilia are showing a little more ability to get on base in front of Bonds. After three games, though, Benito Santiago is 2 for 13 (.154) with two singles. I know he was the NLCS MVP, but he's also about 608 years old, and with the way Bonds is hitting the ball it's making more and more sense to walk Bonds, even with runners on and less than 2 out, and make Santiago try to do the damage.

Posted 5:05 PM by Sean
Rob Neyer is annoyed about the "loophole" that allowed Frankie Rodriguez to take a spot on the Angels' playoff roster despite being called up on September 15. Quoth Neyer:

"It might be one thing if Rodriguez was taking the place of, say, Troy Percival or John Lackey. But the intent of the rule is presumably to allow a team to replace a key member of the roster, and Steve Green's major-league experience consists of exactly one game and six innings, on April 7, 2001."

What Neyer ignores is that, prior to his callup, Rodriguez had even less experience than Steve Green - zero innings pitched, in zero games played. That's right, Rodriguez's major league debut occurred on September 18, 2002. So one inexperienced pitcher was replaced by another, who turned out to be fantastic, against all odds. Two words: tough noogies.