Daily Archives: October 16, 2009

The rain has held off all day. Though the skies remain gray and threatening, it seems they’ll get Game One of the ALCS in. I only hope it’s without interruption. Even still, it should be a miserable night to be out there as temperatures dipping into the 30s could get downright icy with some precipitation. In the comments the other day, Sliced Bread compared the weather to an air-conditioned car wash. CC Sabathia has spent his career pitching for teams in Cleveland and Milwaukee, but one wonders if the cold could be partially to blame for his perennially poor Aprils. Either way, here’s hoping he waxes the Angels tonight.

As a sort of pregame show, here’s the latest Bronx Banter Breakdown staring Alex, myself, and Ted Berg talking Yankees-Angels ALCS. My massive series preview is the post below this one. We can’t get any more ready. Play ball!

This is going to be epic. The ALCS should be pretty good, too.

When the decade began, the idea of a Yankees-Angels rivalry seemed laughable. The Yankees were on their way to their fourth world championship in five years and the Angels hadn’t made the postseason since 1986. Then came 2002. Having come two outs from a fifth title in 2001, the Yankees won the AL East for the fifth year in a row and were matched up against a surprising 99-win Wild Card team from Anaheim in the first round. The Yankees were the clear favorites, but after pulling out a come-from-behind win in Game One thanks to an eighth-inning homer by Bernie Williams, they were swept in the next three games by the relentless Angels, who went on to win the franchise’s first pennant and world championship.

A losing season in 2003 seemed to paint the Halos as a fluke, but they came storming back in 2004 and won their division. Since then, the Angels have won the AL West in five of the last six years, went 30-18 against the Yankees from 2004 to 2008, and beat the Yankees in the ALDS again in 2005 in a nerve-wracking series that saw the Yankees blow fifth-inning leads in Games Two and Three and lose Game Five in large part because of an outfield collision between Gary Sheffield and Bubba Crosby that allowed two runs to score.

It was also that series that, to many minds, sealed Alex Rodriguez’s reputation as a post-season choker. Rodriguez hit .133 in the series and, representing the tying run in the ninth inning of Game Five, followed a Derek Jeter leadoff single with a back-breaking double-play. The trick was that the Angels gave Rodriguez nothing to hit, walking him six times and hitting him twice. As with that double play, Alex got himself into trouble by expanding his zone and swinging at the junk he was being offered, but he still posted a .435 on-base percentage on the series. That devilish and effective strategy came from the mind of manager Mike Scioscia, who took over the Angels in 2000 and has presided over what has been by far the franchise’s most successful decade.

The Angels seemed to have the Yankees’ number again this year when they swept them in Anaheim just before the All-Star break to take a 4-2 lead in the season series, but the Yankees, as they did to the entire league, stormed back in the second half to even the series, thus avoiding losing the season set to the Halos for the first time since 2003.

Both teams swept their way to this year’s ALCS, though the Angels did it in more convincing fashion against a superior opponent, the Red Sox, while the Yankees needed a pair of comebacks to beat the lowly Twins. For the Angels, it is their first ALCS appearance since they beat the Yankees to get there in 2005. For the Yankees, it’s their first since they were victims of the Red Sox’s groundbreaking comeback from a 0-3 deficit in games in 2004. Though both teams are postseason staples, making five of the last six, neither has reached the World Series since the Yankees out-lasted the Red Sox in the epic 2003 ALCS.

The blood isn’t nearly as bad in this matchup, but the Yankees find themselves on an unfamiliar side of this one-sided rivalry. It’s the Bombers who always come up short in this pairing. Having finally escaped the perilous best-of-five format of the Division Series, this rivalry will literally reach the next level over the next week. Though the Yankees are clearly the better team by objective measure, I expect the series will be hard-fought and heart-stopping. My official prediction is Yankees in seven, and I expect nothing less.

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I keep reading these missives from the mainstream media that breathlessly wonder how the Yankees are going to deal with the Angels’ attack-dog offense, their aggressive baserunning, and their deep starting pitching. Well, here’s what I want to know. How are the Angels going to deal with the Yankees, who scored more runs than any major league team in the regular season, have the best starting pitcher of the two teams in the ALCS, and feature a far deeper and more dynamic bullpen? How are the Angels going to deal with a balanced lineup filled with hitters who know how to control the strike zone, most notably Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, and Alex Rodriguez? And just how will an undermanned Angels bullpen handle a lineup that features four switch-hitters in Mark Teixeira, Jorge Posada, Nick Swisher and Melky Cabrera, making favorable late-inning matchups a difficult proposition?

Perhaps it’s just the usual glass-half-empty approach from an overly paranoid New York press crew, but all of the expressed concerns about the Angels have me wondering how the Yankees could possibly be favored by the oddsmakers. It seems to me that all of the fawning analysis about the Angels ignores two basic facts: 1) the Yankees, and not the Angels, led the major leagues with 103 wins and 2) the Yankees won three of the final four head-to-head matchups against their longtime nemeses. Maybe it’s just me, but an objective analysis of the teams and their accomplishments has me thinking optimistically about the Yankees’ chances. For what it’s worth, I’ll take the Yankees in six.

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Today’s news is powered by a sterling scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”:

• Baseball Prospectus gives us the following postseason odds (winning percentages):

Win CS Win WS
NYY       73.3              40.6
LAA        26.7                 8.3
LAD        54.9               28.4
PHI          45.1              22.7

• Still at Baseball Prospectus, Eric Seidman analyzes the Yanks/Angels match-up, and summarizes thusly:

I have picked the Yankees to win the World Series in each of my last three chats, and while I won’t be terribly surprised if the Angels pull out a series win and advance to the grandest of stages, I fear their starting pitching will not be able to quiet the powerful Yankee bats. This will lead to Scioscia having to alter his intended usage of the bullpen, off of whom the Yankees are more than likely to feast. The Angels aren’t going to go quietly, but I do not see this series lasting longer than five games, with the Yankees advancing to the World Series. Winning four of five games does not imply any sort of dominance as each could be within one run, but the areas in which the Yankees hold advantages outweigh those of the Angels.

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