Game 4: Last Dance with Mary Jane

One more time to kill the pain. Yeah, this one was painful. But this brings up an interesting dilemma. Which is more painful, losing like this or getting pounded by a clearly better team like the Angels did last year?

This one is hard. On the one hand, I enjoyed watching this series WAY more than last year. But I have a feeling this loss will linger into the offseason, while it was easy to write off the loss last year. I’m thinking this one will be more painful.

How about this one: is it more painful to be the better team and lose or to be the worse team and lose even though you should have won? I think the former is a lot more painful. And I think that’s why the Angels are so mad (Lackey said afterwards that he wanted to throw someone through a wall). They feel they were the better team and lost. Were they better?

There are so many ways to define better. Did they perform better during the regular season? Survey says: Maybe. The Red Sox outscored them by like 80 runs and gave up the same, which indicates the Red Sox were better. But the Angels won more games, which at the end of the day, is the ultimate measuring stick for a baseball team. Inconclusive.

Were they fundamentally a better team (as in, were the players who comprised the Angels more talented than those of the Red Sox?) This is a tough one too. I think you could definitely make the argument that the Red Sox were more talented offensively (Ortiz, Bay, Youkilis, Pedroia, Drew vs Vlad, Teixeira, Hunter, Anderson, and Napoli). But I would put the Angels top 4 starters and top 4 relievers ahead of the Sox. I think the Sox are probably a little bit more talented overall, but after adding Teix, I don’t think the gap is all that big.

Lastly, who was the better team as measured by their performance in this series? Game 1 was definitely the Sox. Game 2 was tough – the Angels had guys on base almost every inning, they just couldn’t get the big hit (ultimately what doomed them in this series). The Sox got the big hit, but the Angels played a better game overall. It’s kind of a wash, maybe give the Sox a slight edge. Game 3 was definitely played better by the Angels. One mistake cost them 3 runs, otherwise, they were the better team.

Game 4 was another tough one. Lester was good for 7 innings. Lackey was good, but not quite as good. The hitters were equally baffled except for a couple of innings where they put some hits together. The difference is that once again, the Angels made one crucial error (crucial may be the understatement of the eon). The Red Sox didn’t. I’ve done my share of doubting when it comes to K-Rod, but I really believe, with the second half of the Sox lineup coming up, that he would have held a one run lead in the ninth. My belief doesn’t mean anything of course, because it didn’t happen. Anyway, I think the Sox outplayed them again, but not by much at all. When you factor in Lackey’s pride and belief in his team’s abilities, you can’t fault him for thinking the Angels got beat by a worse team. And the difference between the two seems so close, it’s hard to even know if he’s wrong.

So where to lay the blame for this one? There’s essentially four possible places:

1. The hitters (as a whole): They couldn’t get anything going and for the most part couldn’t capitalize the few times they DID have something going. However, I don’t think this is place for blame. Sometimes you give credit where credit is due, and Jon Lester was very very good last night.

2. Shields. Again, I don’t think you can blame Shields very much. Bay’s double was an opposite field bloop. Lowrie’s hit was a seeing eye single that came about 6 inches from Kendrick’s glove. The guy had pitched 3 and two thirds innings in the last two nights and had pretty much shut the Sox down. He does get some blame for not mixing up his pitches at all (more on that in a second). So I give him 7% of the blame.

3. The coaching staff: Namely, Scioscia for calling the squeeze and Scioscia/Butcher for not at least going out to talk to Shields after he gave up that rocket to Kotsay and had thrown about 90% curveballs in the inning (when the curveball is not his best pitch). Last one first. Not going out to visit Shields was poor coaching. Who knows what would have happened, but it might have helped. As for the squeeze, I don’t think the squeeze itself was a bad call, but I wouldn’t have called it on that pitch. Delcarmen had just come in the game and hadn’t really come all that close to the strike zone. It’s a pretty tough assumption that Delcarmen would throw a strike since he hadn’t shown he could. Delcarmen’s a young guy in a HUGE pressure cooker. I would have waited until the guy threw a strike to make that call. I put about 30% of the blame here.

4. Aybar: The rest of the blame goes here. Yeah, it might have been a questionable call, but you absolutely have to put the bat on the ball. You have to. You do whatever the heck it takes. That pitch should haunt him all offseason long.

So yeah, this was painful. I’ll be transferring my allegiance to the Rays, and to the Dodgers to some extent. I really just hope for good baseball from here on out. (EDIT: This isn't true. I actually hope the Red Sox get humiliated in the ALCS.)

I might be offering some insight as to the rest of the postseason, especially if there’s a particularly interesting game that I have the chance to watch. Outside of that, I’m not sure what I’ll be putting on this blog. I’m going to try to update it several times a week, but who knows what it will look like. We’ll see. Check back regularly.

Good season Angels, despite the bad ending. I’ll be here next season.