I had resolved not to watch any more baseball this season, and for a while, my resolution held. But with the Red Sox, the stupid red-legged, navy-capped New England Master of Clutch clawing their way back ( a feat I grudgingly had to tip my cap to), I knew that I'd have to watch last night's game. I saw the BoSox threaten the Rays bullpen time and time again, and each time, instead of breaking through as they did against my Angels, Tampa Bay came through with the stop. And with David Price playing the role of the rookie phenom that K-Rod played to such perfection in the 2002 postseason, my night ended watching those in red nad navy trudging down the hallway to spend a long fall and winter wondering how they could come bac, play so hard, all for naught, and watching the boys in blue and white dogpile like I've never seen before.

The Phillies and the Rays are both clubs that have played hard and won against all odds at times this season, and both franchises (and one city) are starved for championships to bring them back to legitimacy. The Rays are looking like a dynasty in the making, even if they don't win the championship this year, and may soon be hated as much as the Red Sox and Yankees are by non-fans of those clubs, but for now, all I can say to Halo scion Joe Maddon is thank you.Thanks, Joe, for managing to hammer that final nail into the Red Sox coffin.

It wasn't intentional, merely a by-product of your success, but thanks for avenging the Angels, who couldn't avenge their own past and continaully choked away games in the ALDS. The Angels, who secured home-field advantage by winning a franchise-best 100 games before losing both home games and stumbling to a mistake-filled end, who left runners on bases without so much as a "bon voyage" while watching strikes slide past them and swinging like amateurs at big curves.

The Angels couldn't do it, not this year anyway, but at least SOMEONE could.

This baseball fan, heart-broken not so long ago, can finally rest and enjoy the off-season, free from reading the sports pages every night, until next spring. The Red Sox are dead. Long live the Rays.

For now, at least.

I have a problem with the disparity between leagues and divisions, and it has bothered me ever since the Brewers went all National on everyone. As an Angels fan, I'm tired of hearing about how the West is small and soft, and as a proponent of fair play I don't get how it's remotely fair for one league to let about 28.5% of its teams into the playoffs and another to only let 25%. While the American League is probably a more competitive division at the top, it's hard to say how things would shake out if you had added two new clubs to the bigs (my picks would be Portland and the rapidly growing OKC, personally), of course to the AL to give each league 16 teams.

One of my favorite things about baseball is that it's never been easy to make the playoffs. In the NBA, a vast portion of teams sneak into the playoffs; in fact, the 1983-1984 season saw 16 of the 23 clubs make the playoffs. In other words, so long as you weren't godawful, you managed to have a shot. Washington, the #8 seed in the Eastern Division, had a sparkling .427 winning percentage, generally good enough for last place in baseball (though a few teams always aspire to be even worse). Other than giving the top seeds a pseudo-bye, all it seemed to do was extend the playoffs needlessly while also glorifying a playoff hunt that rarely paid off. Football is a bit more even-keeled, as each 16-team conference sends 6 teams to the playoffs.

The road to the World Series is much more difficult, however, and  I've always loved that. When I was a kid, you could only win the West by clambering over six other teams. But as baseball expanded, adding a whopping four teams in the '90s, it also evolved, splitting the game into the current formation, which is nothing short of bizarre. Divisions with varying team counts, leagues with a 2-team difference, and the Wild Card, a playoff role not native to baseball. You don't have to be the best team in your division to make the playoffs, after whcih all bets are off anyway in the microscopic 5-game series that tests a team's 3-man rotation and hot streaks more than a team's overall depth. By adding two teams, baseball could go to an NFL-style split with a baseball-style playoff system. Split divisions into North, South, East, and West, and give each division a champion who moves on to the playoffs. Forget this Wild Card thing, which only serves as a playoff footnote (like when the Angels and Giants played in the WS, when their status as Wild Cards got more play than anything else, save Barry Bonds and the Rally Monkey).

Maybe I'm crazy, but divisional and league symmetry, as well as crowning champions only, sounds best to me. Baseball likes the Wild Card, though, because it extends the validity of the season for many teams that would otherwise have faded away (like Milwaukee). By keeping more teams in the "mix", baseball gets more games on prime TV slots, more butts in seats, and more of that playoff chase glow when many division races just wouldn't be that interesting.

Baseball should get back to crowning champions, not second-place teams. Go 4x4x2 and have a representative team from each region. You may have more jockeying for home-field advantage and less for real playoff spots, but you're almost guaranteed to represent more areas of the country (though baseball did pretty well on that front this year, especially in the AL), and when two teams meet in the World Series, the greatest of championships, they both arrive as winners, not second-bests who underdogged their way to a championship game they would have had no place in 20 years ago. Restore champions to baseball, and stop giving second-place teams a ticket to the playoffs they only earned because baseball didn't know what to do with 30 teams (since keeping an interleague series going at all times was apparently some kind of nightmate). Get it done now, before the wild card settles in too much more as some kind of "tradition." If a team here or there has to move (say, out of Miami), you don't even have to change the alignment. And t'll even tell you how to do it, Bud, just so you can agree with me.

NL East
Mets
Phillies
Pirates
Nationals

NL South
Braves
Marlins
Cardinals
Astros

NL North
Cubs
Brewers
Rockies
Reds

NL West
Dodgers
Diamondbacks
Padres
Giants

AL East
Yankees
Red Sox
Orioles
Blue Jays

AL South
Royals
Rays
Rangers
Oklahoma City/Nashville/Louisville/Des Moines Franchise

AL North
White Sox
Twins
Tigers
Indians

AL West
Angels
A's
Mariners
Portland Expansion

There. Done. Fix baseball like this.

While there is the tiniest bit of reassurance that at least the Angels beat the Red Sox in the postseason, the general feeling from this Angels fan is one of frustration. From lineup changes never made to player mistakes, the Angels lost themselves. They've been beaten by Boston in the past for sure, but this year, the Angels pretty much just handed the Red Sox their tickets to the ALCS.

I think Mike Scoscia is the best coach the Angels have ever had and expect him to continue to helm the club for many years to come, but I can't help but point out that Howie Kendrick should've never started past Game Two. I'll give him Game 1 to get the jitters out, but he stayed jittery all the way through, and this oft-touted "future batting champion" looked totally overmatched, swinging at awful curve balls in the dirt and falling behind in every count. If he had provided stellar, game-changing defense I could have overlooke dhis ability to kill rallies just by taking the plate, but his bobbles, late jumps, and general mediocrity in the field made me sorry he'd made the postseason roster. In short, Kendrick was a major factor in another first-round bump for the Angels.

While Vlad Guerrero's stat line doesn't look terrible, I can't believe the Angels' offensive hero for the entire series was Mike Napoli. Now, when Nap's hot, he's on fire, and he put that heat on display in Game Three, but I can't help but wonder when Valdimir Guerrero will show up in the postseason. The free-swinging beast of a player let pitchers get ahead by being too cautious on the first pitch, facing many 0-1 counts after Lester and Okajima would groove one right into the wheelhouse, and when he did make contact, it was for piddly singles. The worst of it, though, was the looks he was giving throughout the series. He was looking frustrated, confused, and hopeless, without that competitive fire that drives a team. Instead of carrying these guys on his back like he did in 2003, that role was left to mark Teixera. While Tex didn't swing for power either, his eye was excellent, and when he swung out of the zone, it seemed to be with a knowledge of what the ball would do every time. In Game Five, his strikeout against Lester, a pivotal moment, was not even his fault - the pitches six inches off the plate (as verified by TBS) were simply bad calls by the home plate umpire. Watching Vlad and Tex play, I found myself wondering if Guerrero's best days are behind him and he's headed towards even more power and contact reduction, and if maybe the Angels shouldn't be pursuing their mid-season acquisition with everything they've got. I've not seen such a steady mid-lineup presence since Garret Anderson's glory days.

And let's go there, shall we? I love Garret Anderson; he's Mr. Angel to me, and always will be, even moreso than Tim Salmon. But his performance in Game 4 was what set up the middle of the order to be at a direct disadvantage all night long. I know his swing and stance make good left-handed sliders tough on him, but he looked like a 9-spot hitter, like he should've been on the bench waiting for a right-handed pitcher to pinch-hit against. Left field would have been better with Willits, who finally got a chance to make a difference before being hung up to dry on the failed suicide squeeze.

It's hard to talk about the series and not get angry, but what's important to draw from it is the experience that Aybar and Kendrick soaked up; give them a healthy 2009 and I guarantee they'll be much better prepared next playoffs. Record aside, it's obvious that K-Rod is merely an above-average reliever prone to struggle with his control and his dropping velocity. The Angels need to just let him go and move ahead with 'Dondo or Shields shutting the door. Or perhaps Escobar can come back as a closer for the remainder of his contract.

Garland should probably head elsewhere, because the salary he wants isn't what the Angels should give a player obviously struggling to make that next step. Moseley, Green, and Adenhart should compete for a starting spot next year, and the other four Angels starters should form the core of one of the Major Leagues' best rotations yet again.

Anderson should be bought out but also re-signed as he and Vlad take turns with DH and playing the field. He starts off ice cold, but GA's second-half surges prove invaluable when others tail off in the summer swelter. Bring him back with the understanding that 300-400 ABs is more realistic than 5-600, and hopefully he'll take it. He should finish his career in Anaheim, and I think his veteran presence is needed on a team that's infusing so much youth into the everyday lineup.

As for the free agent talk, the Angels should pursue Mark Teixeira with everything they've got. His calm, cool demeanor, incomparable batting eye, and well-rounded defense make him one of baseball's very best, and unless your starting 1B is Pujols, Tex is a major improvement. The Yankees can bid all they like; if Arte Moreno really wants a championship, making Teixeira the new centerpiece of his offense is the way to do it. Let him clean up after Guerrero, since he's got the better eye and contact bat, and let Guerrero deal with pitchers who don't want to get to this Scott Boras client.

And plesae don't got for CC. He's a great pitcher, but thepitching staff is very strong as-is, and overloading on great arms is nice unless you can't score, in which case every game is tight and nerve-wracking, becuase 2-1, while still a win, isn't the kind you want day-in, day-out.

The Angels came up short because too many players made basic mistakes in the field and at the plate, but if the Halos can bring back a similar offense, the extra experience (and a few hundred million towards a free-agent rental) should be all they need to get over the hump. Get Wood into the game, probably at 3B, put Figgins in left field and let him work all over giving guys some rest. I will say that the recent love for Kendry Morales baffles me. He had a few good at-bats in the ALDS, but I don't think he's a starter for a division-leading team.