This article has me enraged, so I'll present some money quotes without comment. Let's discuss to our hearts' content.

The best team in baseballisn't even the biggest story in its own city. Right now, Los Angeles is all caught up in the Dodgers' magic number and only casually interested in the Angels' magic team.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim adopted a city, and the city it adopted mostly shrugs in return.

We are all Dodgers, all the time, 24/7 Blue Heaven. What if they were a really good team? What if they win another playoff game? Will we offer our firstborn in celebration?

...

The days ahead will be exciting. All eyes will be on the Dodgers, as clinching-time approaches. The headlines will get bigger, the news broadcasts louder. Those who get paid handsomely these days to count Web hits will do so joyously, because Dodger buzz always drives Internet clatter.

It is late September, almost always Dodger time here. All eyes will be focused on Chavez Ravine. In this city, the Dodgers will have it all.

So I'm in a bit of a quandry. I've been accepted to a pretty good law school located in the greater Boston area, and I'm leaning towards making the journey out to New England.

"That's not a problem, Wraith," you must be thinking. "You should be happy! What a wonderful opportunity to sell your soul! Don't be an asshole!" Well, I am happy and grateful, but my problem is this: I have never really spent long amount of time far from Halo Nation. I went to Stanford for undergrad, but (as we've discussed before) that part of the Bay Area is so split between Giants territory and a mere handful of A's fans that I may well have been patrolling the Neutral Zone looking for errant Romulans.

What is so personally frightening is that I may be going from that relatively calm to the heart of the monster, the very center of Red Sox Nation.

My question for those of you who live far from Angel Stadium is how best to deal with the distance from our beloved team. How do you watch the broadcasts (please tell me there's some other way besides MLB.tv)? If you live in an area nearby one of the other 29 major league clubs, what is the most effective way to deal with the sometimes-hostile fans of other teams? Perhaps more importantly, how do you cope with the emotional pain imposed by the sad separation (perhaps I may be exaggerating)?

If any of you live in the greater Boston area, your help would be greatly appreciated.

From MLB Trade Rumors:

"According to ESPN's Buster Olney, the Rays are "moving toward a deal" to sign free agent reliever Troy Percival.  This could give them a potentially solid veteran relief group in Juan Rincon, Dan Wheeler, Percival, and Al Reyes.

Percival was known to have been seeking a multiyear deal (I'm guessing two years, $10MM or so).  Other suitors: Yankees, Brewers, Giants, and Astros."

And Rotoworld:

"ESPN's Buster Olney reports that the Rays and free agent Troy Percival are working on a deal.
He's believed to have offers from contenders, so we can't imagine that Percival would go to Tampa Bay without a promise of the closer's role. That'd make Al Reyes the eighth-inning guy, with Dan Wheeler and Juan Rincon working earlier in games. Only three spots would remain for a token lefty, Gary Glover, Chad Orvella, Grant Balfour, Scott Dohmann and others."

Now before someone says something, I realize that the following quotes came from a Bill Plaschke article. I will be the first to admit that Plaschke (much like his Times compatriot TJ Simers) is a blithering douchebag. But even Plaschke's particular brand of ill-informed muckraking cannot detract from the wisdom imparted by the words of Mr. Angel himself:

"I love the way these guys won the division manufacturing runs," Tim Salmon said. "But why did we win the World Series? We won because Scott Spiezio hit a home run. We did not win because Scott Spiezio hit a single."

...

"It's frustrating to watch," said Salmon, who was careful to note that he was not being critical of the players or the manager.

"The players are great at what they do, and you'll never hear Mike complain about anything," Salmon said. "But you can't deny that every team in this position needs a couple of clutch hitters who, late in the game, can win a game in one swing."

...

As Salmon noted, manufacturing runs against different levels of pitchers during the regular season is one thing, but trying to do it against everybody's ace in the postseason is a different thing entirely.

"I think we saw the other night, maybe the only way to manufacture two runs against a guy like Josh Beckett would be to hit a two-run homer," Salmon said.

Angels are pretty much powerless

I thought that I would respond to this walk-off loss with doom, gloom, and a deserved suicide watch by my family. But I'm strangely calm. Why?

Because we've won three division titles in four years. Because we've won a world championship. There are a lot of clubs that can't say that.

We simply weren't as ready for this postseason as we could have been. Vlad has a bum wing, GA decided to contract pinkeye, and an already-injured GMJ came up lame catching a flyball in his old stomping grounds. It sucks, yeah, and it hurts, but at least we got to the dance and we had a chance to take home the gold. The playoffs are a crapshoot, and the baseball gods don't look like they're willing to call our number this year.

The outlook for this series may be bleak, but the future looks very bright. Kendrick and Kotchman are still young. A healthy Howie is going to hit close to .400 at a usually offensively-weak position, and Kotch's doubles power will turn into out-of-the-park power as he gets older. A healthy Napoli and a more mature Mathis will give us a solid catching duo. I'm going to make acuda happy and say that Kendry gives us a good option at DH, and we mercifully have a glut at that spot with a healthy Johnny Rivers, provided he doesn't think about sliding into first again.

On the pitching side, Lackey is going to continue to mature and settle in as the staff ace. Jered Weaver is going to build upon a fairly solid sophomore campaign (when many prognosticators were predicting a disaster-filled 5-ERA season) and give us numbers worthy of a number-two pitcher in the third spot of the rotation. Saunders will mature as well and give us a solid lefty arm in the rotation.

And that's what we've got at the major league level. Brandon Wood will provide Glaus-like power (with better defense) at third sack. Terry Evans is going to provide us some pop at one of the corner outfield positions when GA retires and Vladdy makes the eventual move to DH. Nick Adenhart still has his arm attached.

The reality is that we were a few strikes and a foul-ball-caught-by-a-chowda-head away from taking  a split series back to Anaheim. Scioscia took a rational gamble walking Ortiz to pitch to Manny, and sometimes gambles don't work out. That was the case tonight. That's baseball.

But at the end of the day, this is a club that will continue to contend for years to come. We are not the Phillies or Rockies, who arguably have this one opportunity to make it to the World Series before lapsing into another postseason drought. We're going to be playing October baseball in 2008, we're going to get another shot in the dance.

So like our good manager says, one game at a time. Look toward tomorrow, don't dwell on today, because tomorrow still looks promising no matter what happens during the rest of the series.

A refreshing article by Tom Verducci debunking many postseason myths, including:

2. The "hot" teams -- the ones that play well down the stretch -- are the ones to fear in the postseason.

Hello? Was anybody watching last year? St. Louis (12-17) and Detroit (12-16) were awful in September, but wound up playing each other in the World Series. But it's not just last year. Of the 24 World Series teams in the wild-card era, 14 of them -- a clear majority -- posted a worse winning percentage after Sept. 1 than they did overall. The Cardinals and Tigers were the sixth and seventh teams in that 12-year period to play losing baseball after Sept. 1 and still reach the World Series.

3. The team that won the season series has the edge over its opponent.

Not so. The next time somebody wants to bring up how playoff teams did against one another during the season, tell them to save their breath. It's irrelevant.

Over the past two seasons, the team that won the season series over its opponent is 3-9 when those same teams meet in league postseason play. Did I hear someone say "small sample"?

OK, let's look at the entire Division Series and League Championship Series history during the wild-card era. The team that won the season series is 33-36 in postseason rematches, including 12-21 since 2001 (excludes three matchups of teams that tied their regular-season series). So fear not the Yankees, Indians fans. October really is a whole new season.

4. It's important to earn home field advantage.

No, it's not. Home teams in postseason games in the wild-card era are 208-182, a .533 winning percentage -- not too different than if you flipped a coin 390 times. It works out to roughly one extra win per year for all postseason teams combined.

But, hey, you say you really want that last game in your park if the series goes the distance, right? Doesn't matter. First of all, 79 percent of Division and League Championship Series never go the maximum number of games (57 of 72). And in those 15 series that did go the distance, the home teams went 5-10.

Now, having World Series Game 7 in your home park might mean something: Home teams are 8-0 in those ultimate games since 1979. But the site of that game is determined by the outcome of the All-Star Game, not by how many games a team wins during the season.

Bottom line: Playoff-certain teams should forget putting the pedal to the metal. Rest your players, especially your pitchers. The postseason -- no matter what myths you want to believe -- as Billy Beane so well put it, really is a crapshoot.

Pure fiction

More evidence of the role chance plays in small sample sizes (like playoff series).

BRING ON THE SOX!

Following up on and confirming a story posted by scareduck, from the Riverside Press-Enterprise:

"Despite lasting just seven batters on Tuesday and frequently testing the Angels' patience, Ervin Santana will remain part of the rotation and make his next scheduled start, a team source said Friday.

It had been widely speculated that Dustin Moseley, who relieved Santana on Tuesday and allowed just two hits in 5 1/3 sparkling innings, would take Santana's spot in the rotation until Bartolo Colon returns from injury.

However, after working in the bullpen, Santana will take the mound Monday against Oakland. "

linky

How many second acts are allowed in Angels baseball?

From the Angels' official website:

It was significant on two fronts -- the comeback by Santana, who once again resembled the 16-game winner from 2006, and the comeback in the ninth inning against a man once known as the most dominant closer of them all.

"Ervin throwing the ball the way we saw is going to be very big for us, and he's going to start next week for us [at Angel Stadium]," Scioscia said.

Working quickly and finding an excellent rhythm with Ryan Budde, who caught him all the way back at Class A ball, Santana retired 16 of the first 17 hitters he faced, throwing mid-90s consistently with a quality slider and changeup that kept hitters off balance."

I think Budde should be Ervin's personal catcher until Napoli comes back.

Angels rally to split the bill with Sox

The Red Sox, with ace pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, could start the 2008 season at the Tokyo Dome, the No. 2 official of the players' association said Wednesday. The Los Angeles Angels or Oakland Athletics are the most likely opponent, with the Seattle Mariners also a possibility, several people familiar with the discussions said.

"It's going to be exciting," Boston third baseman Mike Lowell said. "We've got some marquee names that are going to bring a lot of attention over there. So in that sense it's great, but I don't think guys are too happy to go 22 hours on a plane to play games that count. It's not the game itself. It's the aftereffects."

I for one hope that it's Seattle or Oakland. That plane ride is going to be nasty.

Linky here