  Angels manager Mike Scioscia hits a ball during practice in Anaheim on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) |
NEW YORK -- Given the tong wars between the Yankees and the Red Sox over the years, it was a bit of an eye-opener for the New Yorkers that the Los Angeles Angels dismissed Boston with such ease.
It should also be a tap on the shoulder for the Bronx Bombers. If they didn't feel at all uneasy before, they should now.
The Angels have been one of the best teams in baseball the past eight years. Five times in that span, they have won the AL West. In one of the years they didn't -- 2002 -- they won the World Series. In those eight years, they have averaged 93 wins a year and only twice in that time period have they won fewer than 90 games.
In recent years, though, they have underachieved quite dramatically in October. After they won the World Series as a wild-card team in 2002, they won just one playoff series in the next five. That one win was over the Yankees in the 2005 League Division Series. In the other four series until this year, the Angels had won two games and lost 13.
Maybe this is a team that has finally come into its own, maybe a little tired of the losing in crunch time. But also maybe there's some truth to the feeling this is a team of destiny, rallying around the tragic loss of young pitcher Nick Adenhart last April in a car crash.
"Last year everything went bad for us," said centre fielder Torii Hunter.
"These guys came to spring training ready to go, pumped up. A lot of things happened this year. We had a lot of obstacles to overcome, but we found something, man.
"We found some heart, we found purpose and passion and we showed it against the Red Sox, one of the best teams in the East. Against one of the best closers in the game, we went out there and did our thing."
"We finish the game. Before, we couldn't close it," third baseman Cone Figgins said. "We didn't make the big defensive play, make the big pitch or get the big hit."
When you win 103 games in a season, it's a given that you don't lose many season series to other teams. But the Yankees were nipped 5-4 in nine games against L.A. this year.
Take it back over the past three years and the edge is even greater. In 2008, the Angels took seven of nine games from New York and a year before that, they won six of nine. So, to recap, in the past 27 games played between these two teams, the Angels have won 18.
That's probably not going to keep the Yankees awake at night. They have their pitching lined up and rested to the point that Joe Girardi is not at all worried about going in with a three-man rotation. It makes sense, given that CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte are clearly the class of his available starters.
Given the way the off-days fall, Sabathia would likely be the only one to have to pitch on three days' rest anyway and he's done that routinely throughout his career.
Both Burnett and Pettitte, even in a three-man rotation, would each pitch on normal rest.
Girardi would be able to keep his suspect bullpen strong with both Joba Chamberlain and Chad Gaudin.
And then there's Alex Rodriguez, finally stepping up to perform on the big stage.
GALVANIZE
"Alex Rodriguez can carry this team on his back," relief ace Mariano Rivera said. "The big thing for him, after all that has happened to him, is that he can finally relax. When a player of that talent can finally relax, he can just let it fly and that's what Alex is doing right now."
The Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2000 but it took the embarrassment of not making the playoffs in 2008 for the first time since the 1994 strike to galvanize them into a force this year.
Given the obvious resolve of both teams, this series has promise as a classic.
KEN.FIDLIN@SUNMEDIA.CA
