One punch at a time 

Posted 10:07 AM by Sean
With the magic number down to eight, the last thing the Angels need is complacency, which may mean that being swept by the Devil Rays earlier in the season will have the side benefit of keeping the boys sharp this weekend. Nothing like the lingering smell of humiliation to put a little more fizz in your soda, right?

Adam Kennedy, at least, is singing the right tune:

"It's better to be up three games than down three, but we have three tough games
against Tampa Bay [beginning tonight] and four at Oakland [beginning Monday],"
said Angel second baseman Adam Kennedy, who had two doubles, a single and a run
batted in Thursday. "A three-game lead seems like a lot to some, but it's not."

Tonight, the Angels will face Casey Fossum, a lefty with a fastball, a slider, and a couple of curveball variations. This would probably be a good night to give Darin Erstad the night off, but I think the lineup will probably look something like this:

Figgins - CF
Cabrera - SS
Anderson - DH
Guerrero - RF
Molina - C
Erstad - 1B
Rivera - LF
Quinlan - 3B
Kennedy - 2B

...with Molina and Rivera possibly swapping spots in the order. If Garret Anderson is held completely out of the lineup for another day, I think we'd likely see Bengie moved to DH while Jose Molina catches. Jose is a good candidate to get a start on Sunday, since (1) on Sunday the Angels play a day game after Saturday's night game, (2) they face a left-handed pitcher, and (3) John Lackey - he of the 18 wild pitches this year - will very possibly be starting on short rest.

Posting and running 

Posted 3:42 PM by Sean
Agh - swamped with stuff to do today, just just some quick notes:

* That little chess match between Scioscia and Showalter last night was excellent. Give Scioscia credit for being unafraid to pinch-hit Quinlan for Kennedy, the right move regardless of Kennedy's veteran status, and for making what turned out to be the right decision by not pinch-running for Bengie Molina in the seventh, preserving Jose Molina to pinch-hit for Kotchman.

* Tonight's Rangers starter is Chris Young, who hasn't pitched in a game in about two weeks. In his last start, he left after one inning due to arm fatigue; he's right around his career high for innings pitched, and is expected to go no more than five innings today. Originally, the Rangers were expected to use Ryan Rupe in long relief today, which may be out the window after they had to use Rupe last night for 1.2 innings.

* Young is somewhat similar to Loe in that he's a very tall right hander - 6'10", in fact, which makes him the tallest pitcher in Rangers history. He lives off his fastball, but mixes in a changeup, a curve, and a slider, none of which are better than average. Lefties hit him better than righties, but, most importantly, he's an extreme flyball pitcher - about 0.60 grounders to every fly ball. Hence the lineup will be heavy on the lefties again, and hopefully Anderson will be in good enough shape to at least swing the bat. After putting a charge into a couple of pitches last night, Finley is a distinct possibility if GA can't play.

* Expect to hear all about that nighttime marine layer keeping balls in the park from Hudler and Physioc.

Biting and clawing 

Posted 12:43 AM by Sean
More detailed thoughts tomorrow, but for now, three observations:

1. The Angels are now 21 games over .500 for the first time all season. They'd hit the 20-game mark three or four times, but went into a skid each time.

2. Although the Rangers were already mathematically eliminated from the division race, tonight's win guaranteed that they won't be able to pass the Angels.

3. The Angels now have the same lead as the White Sox.

Today's lineup notes 

Posted 2:01 PM by Sean
Last night, Mike Scioscia started almost exactly the lineup I would have preferred, opting only to swap Erstad and Molina in the 5 and 6 spots. At first, I thought that things were going to go pretty well - particularly after Orlando Cabrera laid off a few fastballs below the zone and drove a changeup back through the middle for a base hit in his first at-bat. Eventually, however, Dominguez started locating his fastball, and kept the Angels off-balance for most of the rest of the game.

Fortunately, in a game that was all about pitching, Bartolo Colon continued to show why he's the first true ace the Angels have had in a long, long time. Until his back stiffened up in the sixth, Colon was almost unhittable, craftily inducing several desperation swings that ended up being soft grounders. He may or may not end up winning the Cy Young Award this year, but he's definitely the club's first 20-game winner in 31 years, and for that he gets huge props.

Somewhat parenthetically, how amazing is it that the four Angels' starters with enough innings to qualify for postseason awards are all in the top 13 in American League ERA?

Colon - 3.34 (4th)
Washburn - 3.35 (5th)
Lackey - 3.46 (8th)
Byrd - 3.62 (13th)

And then there's Maicer Izturis, whose inexplicable case of the yips resulted in three errors in two innings at third base. I think we'll just chalk that one up to bad luck and move on.

Today, the Angels face Kameron Loe, a 6'8" righthander who's been in and out of the rotation for Texas this year (and only pitched 7.2 innings for the big club last year). In his most recent stint as a starter, he's been very good, with a sub-3.00 ERA, though he hasn't faced any high-octane offenses in that period.

In Loe, the Angels face another starter with some pretty glaring splits. Lefties hit Loe pretty dang good:

vRHB - .218/.265/.308 (168 PA), 1.93 BB/9, 6.21 K/9, 7.29 H/9
vLHB - .290/.357/.464 (156 PA), 3.67 BB/9, 2.88 K/9, 10.49 H/9

I mean, whoa. That's pretty extreme. The really interesting bit comes when we look at the grounder-to-fly-ball ratios:

vRHB - 3.13 G/F
vLHB - 1.49 G/F

Loe relies heavily on a hard sinker, and it shows in the numbers. This spells particular trouble for Guerrero, who has a 1.86 G/F ratio in September, by far his most terraphiliac month of 2005, and for Bengie Molina, who becomes even more of a double-play possibility than usual.

What does this mean in terms of lineup construction? Principally it means that there are even more competing interests at work than usual as well. You want a lot of lefties in to take advantage of Loe's splits, so Kotchman is a strong possiblity. Rivera hits righties well, and seems to have won Scioscia's confidence by playing well lately, so he's probably in. Izturis is a switch-hitter, and would be a stolen-base threat that could hit in front of Molina to minimize double-play opportunities.

There's just not enough room for all of them. In the ideal world, I think the lineup would look something like this:

Figgins - 3B
Cabrera - SS
Anderson - DH
Guerrero - RF
Erstad - CF
Kotchman - 1B
Rivera - LF
Molina - C
Kennedy - 2B

But that's not going to happen, because Scioscia is not going to put Erstad in center. I think it's slightly possible that Rivera may play center - he's got 130 innings there in his career, 30 of which have come this season - but it's also possible that Scioscia will opt to play Figgins in center, DH Erstad or Kotchman, and put Izturis in the 7 spot. Scioscia has shown a tendency to show confidence in guys who've had bad games by putting them right back on the horse (which he did to good effect with Donnelly after game 1 of the 2002 ALDS).

The possibility of Steve Finley starting in center should probably be acknowledged as well, but the prospect makes me too depressed to go on.

Harden won't start, but may relieve? 

Posted 1:42 PM by Sean
Ken Macha all but concedes that Rich Harden won't start again for the A's, but...

Harden might, however, be well enough to pitch out of the bullpen down the
stretch and -- should the A's qualify -- in the postseason. With a less
aggressive throwing program, Harden could be ready to throw 40-45 pitches by the
final week of the season. If he is ready, the A's will use him as the Angels
have used Kelvim Escobar, a starter whose rehab from an elbow injury landed him
in a relief role with the American League West frontrunners.

"I would think that's what we'd do with [Harden], yeah," Macha said.
"Escobar's given their bullpen a big boost."

And now, the home stretch 

Posted 12:04 PM by Sean
That's it. No more off days, just baseball now: thirteen games to make it or blow it. A two-game lead in the loss column to defend, all the pieces they're going to have, gut-check time.

It starts with Texas, a team that's played the Angels tough over the last couple of years. Though the Angels seem to usually come out on top, the games have been incredibly tense. Tonight's should be no exception, as the Rangers would like nothing better than to play the spoiler role here. In addition to derailing the Angels' season, they've also got to be gunning for a couple of individual streaks: Bartolo Colon's 9-0 record versus the Rangers, and Vladimir Guerrero's 31-game hitting streak against them.

Texas starts Juan Dominguez tonight, who's never started against the Angels but did pitch effectively against them in relief earlier this year. Dominguez is kind of a mirror image of Jason Johnson, in that he's substantially worse against righties:

vLHB - .230/.322/.410, 1.29 G/F, 115 PA, 4.39 BB/9, 6.08 K/9, 7.76 H/9
vRHB - .297/.344/.432, 1.03 G/F, 129 PA, 2.51 BB/9, 6.59 K/9, 10.99 H/9

The interesting bit is that Dominguez is himself a right-hander, so his splits are the reverse of normal. Looking at the numbers, we see that a fairly substantial number of the walks he issues to lefties are being transmuted to hits by righties. Dominguez is a fastball-changeup guy who mixes in the occasional curve, so I'm not really sure what's going on there, but if I had to guess I'd say that right-handers have been hitting that changeup, which they see just a tiny bit later than lefties do (making the functional difference between the change and the fastball that much less).

This makes things interesting in terms of the lineup. Obviously, the usual righties will need to step up and drive the ball - Guerrero, Cabrera, and Bengie Molina, front and center, please. I would hope, as well, that Juan Rivera will be in the starting lineup; Rivera actually hits righties better than he hits lefties (.293/.335/.494 this year), so things are really set up for him to perform. The real questions, as always, will be at third base and center field. Figgins is a given to play one of those spots. If he's in center, Robb Quinlan (a righty) could play third - but I think Quinlan's .152/.204/.196 line against righties makes him suspect, even against Dominguez. If Figgins plays third, Finley or DaVanon could play center, but both of them have been terrible against righties as well.

Instead, I think the best of a set of bad options is probably to start Figgins in center and Maicer Izturis at third. Izturis is a switch-hitter currently batting .269/.310/.381 against righties, and he's about as good a third-baseman as either Quinlan or Figgins.

My preference would be to see something like this:

Figgins - CF
Cabrera - SS
Anderson - LF/DH
Guerrero - RF/DH
Molina, B. - C
Erstad - 1B
Rivera - LF/RF/DH
Izturis - 3B
Kennedy - 2B

Why Molina fifth instead of Rivera? Simply put, protection for Vlad. Rivera may be hitting well, may even be expected to hit better than Molina if you're just going by the splits. But protection isn't just about being a better hitter on a given day, it's about having a reputation. True, Rivera might have as good or better a shot at making the Rangers pay for walking Guerrero, but the Rangers don't really know him well enough to respect him. They know Molina, though - and they damn sure know he's hit .393/.486/.643 off Texas pitching this year. With Molina hitting fifth, Guerrero will see more pitches. Erstad, meanwhile, hits ahead of Rivera solely to break up the righty-lefty matchups in the late innings.

Of course, it's also possible that Jose Molina will catch tonight; Colon often throws to Jose, in which case I'd bump Rivera, Erstad, and Izturis up and bat him eighth (ideally, you'd want Izturis to get on base, Molina to bunt him over, and Kennedy to drive him in). Considering the Angels are coming off an off-day, though, I suspect Scioscia will opt for Bengie.

Of tangential interest 

Posted 10:51 AM by Sean
A couple of items:

* Troy Percival will not need elbow surgery. It's still unclear whether he'll be able to pitch next year; if not, he's expected to retire.

* A's ace Rich Harden "has no idea" if he'll be able to pitch again this year, according to the San Jose Mercury-News. In the same article, we learn that A's shortstop Bobby Crosby's return is being delayed, in part, because he is unable to take infield/batting practice today because McAfee Coliseum is being converted from football to baseball configuration, and is hence unavailable. (Update: Rob sez that Will Carroll sez that Harden is very likely done for the season. Also, Brad told Ashley that Tiffany totally saw Tyler making out with Courtney under the bleachers during halftime on Friday, OMG!)