It is a day for second guessing after the Boston Red Sox finished off the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, winning their American League Division Series, 3 - 1. The Angels had the best record in Major League Baseball for the 2008 regular season. The Red Sox, on the other hand, entered the series as the wild card team, unable to wrest the top spot of their division from the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Angels were a little flummoxed by their loss. After all, they were the better team as evidenced by the following excerpts:
The consensus in the clubhouse, from starter John Lackey -- seven innings, two earned runs -- to veterans Garret Anderson and Hunter, was that the superior team did not win this series.
"It's totally different [than the 2007 sweep by the Red Sox]," Lackey said. "They were better than us last year. They're not better than us this year."
To [Garret] Anderson, whose future also is uncertain, as the Angels hold an option on his contract for next season, "losing is always hard. I honestly felt we were better than they were, but it doesn't matter if you don't win. We just didn't get the job done and they did."
"You're not going to know who's coming back," [Torii] Hunter said, referring to potential free agents K-Rod, Anderson, Teixeira, Jon Garland, Juan Rivera and Darren Oliver. "You can't say you're going to be in the postseason again and have a team like this.
"This was our chance with this team -- unless everybody comes back. We're a better team than those guys, but they're moving on. They did something right, obviously."
Pitcher Scot Shields and Manager Mike Sciosia were a little more realistic in their assessments:
"I thought for sure that was definitely game over on the play Tex made," Shields said. "They deserve it. They beat us."
"I thought we played much better this series than going back to '04 or '07 against them," Scioscia said. "It's naturally disappointing, but we're going to have to keep trying to get better. That's all we can do."
Were the LA Angels better than the Boston Red Sox?
Conventional wisdom says that the better win-loss record would dictate such thinking. It has been pointed out, however, that the Angels were in a much weaker division than the Red Sox and consequently had a fairly easy go of it for half their games.
The Angels defeated the Red Sox nine times in ten appearances during the regular season. Unfortunately, the Red Sox were constantly dealing with injuries throughout the year, which actually makes their entrance into the post-season even more impressive.
The Angels retooled a bit with the signing of Torii Hunter in the off-season and the trade for Mark Texiera before the deadline. These two players alone provide much needed pop in the middle of the order taking some of that pressure off Vlad Guerrero.
The Red Sox, on the other hand, lost megamashing star Manny Ramirez, perhaps the most feared hitter in baseball today. Without Manny backing him up, David Ortiz' power numbers have dropped drastically (not to mention injury earlier in the season). Mike Lowell, last year's World Series MVP, was no presence in the post season due to a tear in the labrum of his hip. Josh Beckett struggled, causing one to wonder if he was still being nagged by his oblique strain. And post season domineer, Curt Schilling, missed the entire season due to shoulder problems.
In addition to the injuries, two of the club's biggest hitters, Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, decided to go cold for the series.
So, how was it that the "superior" team lost?
Baseball is often a series of lucky breaks, opportunities caused by mistakes and intricate strategies working out correctly. There was certainly a mix of all that in the four games. Errors that cost runs. Squeeze plays not performed properly. Stupid base running gaffes.
But neither team held a clear advantage in any of that.
Pitching is crucial to winning. With the exception of Jon Lester, who was basically unhittable, there was no pitcher that stood out as being dominant. Lackey was decent, but the Sox have scored off him before. Sox pitchers gave up runs as well as Angels pitchers, just not as many.
Jason Bay hit a couple home runs, and JD Drew hit one as well. Mike Napoli dinged a couple over the Green Monster during the one game that the Angels won. The series, though, wasn't exactly a clinic for power hitting. Nor was it really a clinic for small ball either.
So, we come back to the question - how did the "superior" team lose?
The only answer I can come up with is that sometimes the numbers lie. Regular season statistics go out the door in the post-season, and the truth of the matter is this....
It is ALWAYS the better team that wins.
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