Royals surge shows no trouble for Angels

The Angels might lament that they didn't last longer in the American League playoffs, but it's hard to argue that anyone in the AL was going to beat the Kansas City Royals, who are headed to the World Series. The Angels are headed to 2015 with a strong club with a good chance of making that trip.

The Angels need a big bounce back from Josh Hamilton if their five-year, $125 million contract with him is to be vidicated (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

An old saw in sports says that offense fluctuates and defense is a constant. The saw doesn't exactly explain what happened to the Angels in their American League Division Series (ALDS) loss to the Kansas City Royals. But it's a pretty good description.

The Angels finished the regular season with the best record in the game, 98-64, and they did it with hitting. And they lost the ALDS in three games because hitting fluctuates. 

That's really all there is to it. The Angels didn't hit for three days, and they lost three games. They batted only .170 in the series and scored only six runs, despite hitting four homers. It can happen to anyone, and it happens all the time. Playoffs magnify that, but they do not make it remarkable. It's probably, indeed, more likely to happen to a good team in the playoffs than the regular season because, in the playoffs, you're not playing the Houston Astros or the Minnesota Twins. No one gets to the baseball playoffs without being good enough to win them, and that's even after expanding the playoffs to five clubs in each league.

Thus, we find no deeper meaning in the Angels' rapid playoff demise. Explanations? It's three games. The season is a marathon containing many moments, good and bad. If the good moments outnumber the bad, you win in the end. The playoffs are only a moment, and, if the moment isn't right, you lose, right now, and it's over. The End.

The flip side to all of that is the Royals, who were sky high when they played the Angels and have remained that way ever since. After sweeping the Angels in a three-game ALDS, they swept the Baltimore Orioles in a four-game American League Championship Series (ALCS). The Royals will begin the World Series tonight at home against the San Francisco Giants.

The Angels are just going to have to process all of this. It can't be easy, but it's not as if they rolled over against a club they should have beaten. As well as the Royals are playing, it's ridiculous to say anyone should beat them.

During the six-month grind, the Angels were the best team in the game, only to be dispatched in three games by a club that couldn't even win a division. Responses along the lines of "So what?" are in play here. What's not in play is any notion that there's some flaw in the club's design that make it unsuitable for going deep into the playoffs. Perhaps, should the Angels flop in the playoffs the next couple of years, we might detect patterns, but, right now, it's just three games in the dumpster.

The Angels remain an outstanding club, and they took a huge step forward in 2014. They added two very good starting pitchers to their mix, Garrett Richards and Matt Shoemaker, entirely from within their organization. Missing Richards for the postseason certainly didn't help. At the very least, a healthy Richards would have enabled the Angels to delay C.J. Wilson's dreadful Game 3 start until Game 4. Might have harshed the Royals' high a little bit, changed the energy and given the Angels a chance to come back in the series. But maybe not.

Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto should get a nod or two for rebuilding the bullpen on the fly during the regular season. That was some fine work. Bringing in Huston Street to replace Ernesto Frieri for holding ninth-inning leads gave the whole operation a new breath of competence and confidence. With offseason free agent Joe Smith around to carry the eighth, the sixth and seventh innings become opportunities for mixing and matching the limited abilities of certain relievers against the limited demands of those circumstances.

Cole Kalhoun became the regular right fielder this year, and he probably is the guy we saw. Mike Trout finally will win his MVP award. Erick Aybar and Howie Kendrick once again were the players we've been seeing for a few years. The top catcher, Chris Iannetta, is a good baseball player. 

It quickly became irksome to hear the television commentators during the playoffs talk about the greatness of Albert Pujols in the postseason when anyone with just a lick of sense knows he isn't even approximately the same guy who used to win all those big games for the St. Louis Cardinals. Pujols once was the greatest player in the game. Now, he might be one of the best five first basemen in the American League. Still a very good player. But he won't build his Hall of Fame case on his years with the Angels. That doesn't mean he won't help the Angels win, or that the Angels need to upgrade at first base. He will make the day a little better, but he will not save the day. Those days are long gone.

Going forward, the Angels have the pieces together to win the division again in 2015, but there are a couple of red flags. Josh Hamilton and C.J. Wilson each will be in his age 34 season with lots of contract left and decline almost certainly in the future. The Angels received good value in the first couple years of Wilson's deal, but he fell off badly in 2014 and now has two years and $38 million of contract remaining. The Hamilton signing can only be characterized as a grievous mistake. He has delivered almost nothing in two seasons with the Angels and he enters 2015 with three years and $89 million of contract left.

Those are two old players eating a lot of salary and diminishing the club's flexibility by that much. Word from Anaheim has it that the Angels will work their club around the edges. They certainly want to come in with a payroll beneath the taxation threshold of $189 million and, according to the estimates on baseball-reference.com, they figure to come in around $160 million if the pick up all their contract options and go through arbitration with all who are eligible. So, they have a little room.

The club is set in the outfield with Calhoun in right, Trout in center and (lamentably) Hamilton in left. They've got Pujols at first, Kendrick at second base and shortstop Aybar all under contract for 2015. They've also got catcher Iannetta under contract and his backup, Hank Conger, is due for arbitration.

The only pending free agents of much interest are utility infielder John McDonald and reliever Joe Thatcher, both of whom would be well worth signing and neither of whom figure to be expensive. McDonald earned $850,000 in 2014 and he's well worth a million. Thatcher is a hard-throwing left-hander who would really give the Angels a lift if he's healthy. Questions about Thatcher's health and effectiveness, as well as the direction of the market, might take signing him out of the question for the Angels, but they do need a left-handed specialist out of their bullpen.

The Angels still have the pieces, and the question now is whether the pieces will fit again. A productive fitting of the piece would include left-hander Tyler Skaggs continuing his development and being around the whole year, and there's still the matter of how Richards will come back. But it's all there. It's still just a matter of fitting together.

Another lesson learned, again: you never know

Perhaps Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto isn't a genius, but he clearly has something on the game's annointed genius, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane. All Dipoto did this year was rebuild his bullpen on the fly, which is one reason why the Angels go to the last two weeks of the regular season with a 10-game lead in the American League West.

A common scene for the Angels: Huston Street finishing off a save. He's done it 14 times since the Angels picked him up on July 19 (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

We often learn lessons about baseball, and the lesson often is the same lesson: Things aren't always as they seem.

We're thinking about a division, the American League West, in which the first-place club at the non-waiver trading deadline made a spectacular deal for a pitcher to help down the stretch. Subsequently, the second-place club at the trading deadline lost its best pitcher for the remainder of the season due to injury.

Which of these clubs now holds a 10-game lead in the American League West, having all but clinched it with two weeks left in the season? And which club has plummeted through the standings to the point at which its all-but-certain playoff position now is anything but certain?

When this all gets written up, the Angels will be in the books with their first division title since 2009, making an inspired comeback from a miserable start in 2012 and a miserable season in 2013. The story to be told will not include anything about Angels general manager Jerry Dipoto tearing a big piece out of his everyday lineup to add a pitcher he didn't need. But it will say quite a lot about the bullpen that Dipoto has been rebuilding since sometime late last season, and particularly on the fly during the summer of 2014.

How dark was that night in Boston on Aug. 20, when Garrett Richards crumbled to the ground trying to cover first base in the second inning? They drove him off the field and to the hospital. Everyone could tell that Richards was down for good, which meant the Angels were supposed to win this division without a pitcher who was 13-4 with a 2.61 ERA.

It turned out to not be a very dark night at all. The Angels fell behind the Boston Red Sox, 2-0, on the very play that put Richards out for the season, then went down, 3-0, in the third on a homer by David Ortiz against Richards' replacement, Cory Rasmus. But that was as bad as it ever got. The Angels rallied for an 8-3 win that night. They tacked up a five-run inning, which has become common, to forge an easy win. The Oakland Athletics lost, 8-5, to the New York Mets, improving the Angels' lead in the AL West to 1 1/2 games.

The Angels picked up another half-game the next day with another win in Boston, then went to Oakland for a three-game series with a two-game lead. That lead was gone after the A's won the first two, but the Angels picked up the final game for a one-game lead, only to lose it the next night. That next night was to be the first start for which the Angels would need a work-around to replace Richards. The man they put on the job, Wade LeBlanc, wasn't very good, the Angels lost, 7-1, to the Miami Marlins, and an Athletics victory tied the division again.

So, that takes us through the games of Aug. 25, which was the very last moment when the Angels didn't hold first place all by themselves. From that night going to the games of Sept. 13, the Angels were unstoppable – 15-2. Even if the Angels didn't score an average of 6.9 runs during that stretch, they would still have won a lot of those games because the pitchers were tossing a 2.82 ERA. That's the whole staff, which includes some of C.J. Wilson's worst run of pitching in his three years with the Angels.

Think about this. The Angels are out Richards, Wilson can't last more than five innings unless the Angels already have scored 10 runs, Jered Weaver only now and then can put 89 miles per hour on his fastball, the other two starters are people named Matt Shoemaker and Hector Santiago ... and the Angels are getting everybody out.

During that very same run of dates, the Athletics were 4-13. Their offense scored three runs per game – 51 in those 17 games – from Aug. 26 through Sept. 12. In one of those games, they scored 11 runs, so we can just as well think of it as 40 runs in 16 games. The A's were scoring five runs per game as of July 31, the day they dealt left fielder Yoenis Cespedes to the Red Sox for left-hander Jon Lester. Their pitching staff, fortified by the in-season acquisitions of Lester, Jeff Samardjiza and Jason Hammels, tossed a strong 3.21 ERA in those last 17 games, but that's still not as well as the Angels are pitching without their best pitcher.

We do not attempt to explain things like this. We just look on in awe. Angels manager Mike Scioscia is doing something very right with his pitching staff, not the least of which involves massaging the rotation schedule to make the Richards turn come up as seldom as possible. That turn came up three times in those 17 Angels games, and the Angels won all three. They won all three without actually having a starting pitcher to take the starts. Instead, Scioscia has fashioned it as bullpen night, the kind of exhibition usually to be found only in the college game and the low minor leagues, and made it a major league happening.

Bullpen night made its glorious debut on Aug. 30 at Angel Stadium against the Athletics, when Rasmus, Michael Roth, Yoslan Herrera, Fernando Salas, Jason Grilli, Kevin Jepsen, Joe Smith and Huston Street joined forces for a three-hit shutout with 11 strikeouts in a 2-0 win against Samardzija and the Athletics. In 28 innings of pitching on these bullpen nights, the Angels are 3-0, tossing a 2.57 ERA by allowing eight runs (all earned) on 21 hits with 10 walks and 23 strikeouts.

Except for Roth and Jepsen, all of the relief pitchers named just now have been acquired by the Angels within roughly the last year. The pitcher who has been with the organization for the longest, Rasmus, arrived just before the non-waiver trading deadline last year (on July 29, 2013) in a deal with the Atlanta Braves for Scott Downs. Grilli and Street have arrived just this summer, and that's leaving out Joe Thatcher, a key left-handed specialist acquisition who has been felled by injury.

If the Angels had traded for a starting pitcher who tossed a 2.57 ERA in 28 innings over three starts, Dipoto would be heralded as a genius. Maybe, he should be, anyway. He's about to win the American League West without killing his offensive club for a starting pitcher.

Editor's note: All advanced statistics in this piece are from Baseball-Reference.com, unless otherwise indicated.

A's made the trades, Angels made the pitches

The Angels put together a huge four-game sweep of the Oakland Athletics at Angel Stadium during Labor Day weekend, increasing their lead in the American League West to five games. The Angels heroes were pitchers, none of whom arrived with any fanfare this season.

Angels pitcher Jered Weaver doesn't have his fastball, but he has guts and guile, which was enough to defeat the heralded Oakland Athletics acquisition, Jon Lester, in a key game during the past weekend (Keith Allison, (UC International crop)/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The Angels begin the rest of their life today after building a five-game lead in the American League West with a remarkable four-game sweep of the Oakland Athletics at Angel Stadium during Labor Day weekend.

And if it wasn't the Angels who made such bold and celebrated moves for pitching this summer, it was the Angels who received pitching when it really counted. Either that, or the A's didn’t receive hitting when it really counted. We'll say it's the first, but we don't rule out the second.

It has become tiring to labor over the grand error made by Oakland general manager Billy Beane when he traded his left fielder and the anchor of his batting order, Yoenis Cespedes, to the Boston Red Sox for left-hander Jon Lester, who he really didn’t need. But the weekend in Anaheim brought that error into the sharpest possible focus.

The series began with the only truly dramatic game in the bunch, a 4-3 Angels victory in 10 innings on Aug. 28. The A's entered the night one game down in the division and had their best pitcher, Sonny Gray, on the mound. But Gray came a bit unglued in the second inning. Josh Hamilton, Howie Kendrick and Erick Aybar began the inning with consecutive singles, the last of those driving in Hamilton for the game's first run. Then, Gray threw two wild pitches to place Kendrick on third and Aybar on second. A two-out single by Gordon Beckham drove in both runners and gave the Angels a 3-0 lead.

The Angels, countering with struggling left-hander C.J. Wilson, held that lead until the fifth, when the A's began hitting line drives. A leadoff single by Brandon Moss, followed by Geovany Soto's double, gave the A's their first run, then Coco Crisp hit a line-drive single to knock in Soto. In the sixth, the A's tied the game, 3-3, on solo homer by Josh Donaldson.

So, it became a battle of bullpens. And the Angels, who have been rebuilding their bullpen throughout the season, won. Five Angels relievers combined for 4 1/3 scoreless, hitless innings. The Angels won it in short order in the bottom of the tenth against Oakland reliever Ryan Cook. Albert Pujols led off with a walk and took third as he hustled out a single to center field by Hamilton. Kendrick hit a sacrifice fly to right field to drive in Pujols.

We witnessed that night the start of a remarkable occurrence  – the first four out of 29 consecutive scoreless innings by the Athletics, the AL's top scoring team, against an Angels rotation that is aged, unheralded, under-manned – everything but a sure thing. 

The second game, played on Aug. 29, was the definitive game. Not quite as improbable as the third game, perhaps, but what the second game said is in the standings today. The A's sent Lester, the guy for whom they spent heavily to win just this game, against Angels right-hander Jered Weaver, who is doing it all now with guts and guile. It was barely a fair fight.

The A's didn't reach base until Donaldson hit a double with two out in the fourth. They didn't get another hit until Sam Fuld's single with one out in the sixth. By then, the Angels had all the runs they needed, those coming on Chris Inannetta's two-run homer with no one out in the fifth after Aybar led off against Lester with a single. 

When the Angels batted in the bottom of the sixth, we could see the A's come apart at the seams. Watching the wheels come off of a baseball team is never a pretty sight, but the A's flailed all the way through August and it was just a matter of time. That time came with two out and nobody on, when Donaldson, the A's best player, made a fielding error allowing Kendrick to reach. Next, Eric Sogard, playing out of position at shortstop, made a throwing error, moving Kendrick to third and allowing the hitter, David Freese, to reach second base. Aybar then dropped a bunt in front of Lester and reached first base to load the bases. Flustered, Lester walked Iannetta for force in a run and give the Angels a 3-0 lead.

Pujols homered to make it 4-0 after seven innings, at which point Weaver departed, having allowed only three hits. Joe Smith and Huston Street finished out a 4-0 win the the Angels, giving them a robust three-game lead.

The importance of that game for the Angels can hardly be over-stated. They went to the third game of the series now assured that they would end the series with the division lead, even though their pitching plan for the third game – "the Garrett Richards start" that they will forever be trying to fill – was not one to inspire great confidence. That plan was Cory Rasmus, a reliever not even approximately stretched out for a start. The A's would go with Jeff Samardzija, famously acquired from the Chicago Cubs this summer.

No one could have or should have predicted that the team pitching Rasmus would beat the team pitching Samardzija. But the team pitching Samardzija doesn't have any hitters now. Missing Cespedes is some of it, but not all. The A's three-headed catcher (Derek Norris, John Jaso and Steven Vogt) has hit a bit over its head. Donaldson still has decent numbers for the season (.259/.348/.471/.819), but he hasn't been a force since May 30, which ended with him at .285/.379/.561/.940. 

Then there's Crisp, the key and unsung player of the A's surge in 2012 and their continued excellence in 2013. The A's committed themselves to Crisp as their leadoff hitter and center fielder on June 14, 2012, putting Cespedes in left field. Crisp was batting .172 with a .466 OPS. The A's were 28-35. From that point forward, Crisp batted .296 with a .857 OPS. The A's went 66-33, charging from five games back with 10 days left in the season to overtake the Texas Rangers for the AL West title.

The 2013 season was more of the same. The A's spent the entire season either in front or very close to it and easily won the division by five games. Crisp, the leadoff center fielder, had a solid year, if not great, tacking up a 4.3 WAR. He led the club with 93 runs scored and gave the club a solid all-around presence.

Beane has mentioned, correctly, that the A's already were struggling offensively when they traded Cespedes at this year's non-waiver trading deadline, which further mystifies the Cespedes trade. But there's no mystery that the A's decline offensively can be indexed some bit to Crisp. From July 5 to today, Crisp is batting .183 with a .559 OPS. The A's actually peaked offensively on June 4 (.253/.340/.421/.761). From that point to now, they are .244/.311/.372/.683.

Perhaps, then, it's not such a huge surprise that eight Angels pitchers, led by a three-inning start by Rasmus, shut the A's out on three hits to beat Samardzija, 2-0. The A's mounted one threat, that against lefty reliever Michael Roth, in the fourth. A walk, a single and an intentional walk loaded the bass, then Athletics manager Bob Melvin pinch-hit right-handed Jonny Gomes for left-handed Josh Reddick and Angels manager Mike Scioscia brought in right-handed Yoslan Herrera for Roth. Herrera induced a ground ball on which Kendrick at second base made an outstanding play for a double play to end the inning.

And with Reddick out of the game, the Athletics were without a left-handed stick who might have punished the ensuing parade of right-handed Angels relievers. The Angels walked out of the game with a 2-0 win no one could have predicted or expected, as well as a four-game lead.

The final game, on Aug. 31, was icing on the cake, an easy 8-1 Angels win behind rookie right-hander Matt Shoemaker, this season's surprise sensation, who improved his marks to 14-4 and a 3.14 ERA with seven innings of five-hit, shutout pitching. The Angels sacked Athletics left-hander Scott Kazmir with six runs in the second inning. The A's finally scored in the eighth. Angels, 8-1.

With only three games left between the Angels and the A's (Sept. 22-24 in Oakland), the Angels now still have a two-game cushion even if the A's win all three, which means the A's still have to be two games better than the Angels against everyone else just to force a one-game playoff for the division title. None of that seems likely to happen, especially after the Angels exploded and the A's imploded during these last four games in Anaheim.

Richards, big arm, keys to Angels contention

The Angels have the big right arm other clubs have paid for dearly. After making a huge error in 2013 by making Garrett Richards wait while signing free agent Joe Blanton and watching him give up home runs, Richards is getting those starts in 2014, and he's making them count. 

Angels right-hander Garrett Richards is capitalizing on his first real opportunity in the Angels' pitching rotation this season (EricEnfermero/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Of all the reasons for the Angels to enter today's games with the second-best record (67-44) in baseball – and there are many – none is so striking as the emergence of Garrett Richards as a big arm in that starting rotation. Time and again, we've seen Richards own his games this season, though none have been better than his five-hit shutout against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium Monday night.

A year ago, the Angels seemed to have no confidence in Richards, their 2009 first-round draft pick from the University of Oklahoma They might have had their reasons, but those reasons weren't good enough. Rather than stick Richards in the rotation and let him try to swim, they thought it would be prudent to sign Joe Blanton for two years at a total of $15 million and give those starts to him. We saw how that turned out.

Blanton finished 2-14 with a 6.04 ERA in 2013, allowing two home runs for every nine innings pitched. No Angels starting pitcher has turned in a worse campaign since Jim Abbott's regrettable 1996 season, which ended 2-18 with a 7.18 ERA. While Blanton couldn't keep the ball in the park last year, Abbott just couldn't get the ball over the plate in 1996, walking 4.9 hitters per nine innings.

With Blanton taking those starts, the Angels decided to try Richards as a power arm from the bullpen. But relief pitching has never suited Richards. As a reliever, he has taken the ball 55 times in his career, throwing a 4.57 ERA, with hitters hammering out a .736 OPS and a .327 batting average on balls hit in play. In 63 innings as a reliever, he has a WHIP of 1.492. 

Whether he's better equipped psychologically to be a starting pitcher – we should leave that to a psychologist. But the results are clear. He has taken 52 career starts now, covering 320 1/3 innings with a 3.51 ERA and a 1.223 WHIP with a .281 batting average on balls hit in play.

A good portion of those numbers as a starter, of course, are from this season, when he has been a starting pitcher from the beginning. And it isn't just because he's a starter that he's performing so much better. His approach to hitters is improved because he obviously has more confidence in his stuff. That, and his stuff is better.

In years past, Richards would enter a game and everything would be hard, everything would be away. We should say everything was relatively hard, because even his slider averages 87.49 miles per hour and his change up averages 89.83, according to Brooks Baseball. Either of those is a pretty good Jered Weaver fastball these days. 

The key, though, is that he is spotting with greater variety against right-handed hitters and left-handed hitters, and he is throwing those off-speed pitches more often. By the reckoning at Brooks Baseball, Richards is throwing the off-speed pitches 35.82 percent of the time in 2014, compared with 31.53 percent of the time in 2013. Out of every 100 pitches he throws, which basically amounts to a start, Richards is throwing four or five more off-speed pitches than last year.

It's a big difference. His control is good, but it certainly isn't better (2.9 walks per nine innings this year against 2.7 last year), and he's striking out 9.0 batters every nine innings (compared with 63 in 2013). But when hitters make contact, it's not as solid. We can see that not just from watching, but also from noting that batting average on balls hit in play against him is down from .308 in 2013 to .258 this season.

Along with that, all of his pitches are harder, again, per Brooks Baseball, compared with 2013. His four-seam fastball is up from 95.38 mph to 97.19, his sinker is up from 95.43 to 96.84, his change up is up from 88.71 to 89.83, his slider is up from 86.24 to 87.49, and his curve is up from 78.18 to 79.56.

Don't know if there's a correlation here, but Richards leads the American League in two categories: wild pitches (21) and fewest home runs allowed per nine innings (0.294)

A much more obvious improvement to the naked eye is seen by simply watching how left-handed hitters now encounter Richards, which is not comfortably. He's not afraid to go in on left-handed hitters, and they're not dealing with it. Left-handed hitters are batting .190 with a .516 OPS against him. Last year, those numbers were .281 and .751.

Which is to say that Richards is putting it all together. Add it up, and he's 12-4 with a 2.58 ERA this season. Richards, at this moment, has the biggest big right arm – the hardest, at least – of any starting pitcher in the American League. Other clubs have paid deadly to add starting pitchers this season. The Angels gave a chance to a guy who they had lying around. After Monday night's game, Albert Pujols was, in the presence or reporters, putting the name of Garrett Richards in the same breath with the Cy Young Award.

One question frequently posed about Richards concerns his durability. He has consistently pitched 145-150 innings in his five full-season years as a professional, and never more than 157. With his five-hit, nine-strikeout performance in a 5-0 win against the Dodgers Monday night, Richards now has worked 153 1/3 innings in 2014.

With 51 games remaining in the regular season, Richards stands to take the ball 10 more times before the end of September. Then come the playoffs, when the Angels are certain to depend on him. He's 26 now, well into his professional career, and well past the age when we would expect the Angels to go easy on him.

Can Richards put up 10-15 more starts this season and load, maybe, another 100-plus innings onto his arm?

There's only one way to find out.

Editor's note: All numbers in this piece, except those specifically attributed to Brooks Baseball, are from Baseball-Reference.com.

The Angels according to WAR

The statistical confection known as Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has become something of a new religion among a certain strain of baseball fans. As such, it requires a leap of faith, which some of us aren't quite willing to take. Here's what WAR says about the Angels in 2013.

According to WAR, Angels pitchers are considerably better than they were last season, and Scott Downs, in particular, is about five times as good (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).


By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The Angels have become a dangerous team since this season's terrible start, which was even worse than last year's terrible start. It remains that, at 43-45, they are well behind the pace of last year's outfit, which finished 89-73. At the rate that the Angels have won through their first 88 games, they would finish 79-83.

Again, though, the Angels started this year 15-27. Since then, they are 28-18. If they can keep playing at that 28-18 pace (a .609 percentage), they would finish 88-74, which gets them very close to the present pace for the Tampa Bay Rays, who are 50-40 and positioned for the second wild card at 90-72.

The question before us is this: Considering that the Angels, taking the first 88 games in total, are paced to finish ten games worse than they finished last year, what is that difference? How, specifically, are the Angels ten games behind last year's rate of victory?

Like many other commentators, we're intrigued by Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as a way to measure specific player contributions to winning games. Unlike many of those same commentators, who talk as though WAR should be the last word on important questions like a player's worthiness for the Hall of Fame or a Most Valuable Player award, we're not sold on WAR. We're still kicking the tires and checking under the hood.

A check under the hood involves a critique of the methodology, a critical look at the assumptions involved in working out the formula for determining WAR. Tire kicking involves putting certain questions to WAR and seeing how it answers. What follows is an exercise in tire kicking.

Baseball-reference.com (insert deep bow here) bases WAR on the assumption that a team composed entirely of "replacement" players, players of the "4A" type who are easily available to every team, would win 48 games in a 162-game major league season. Thus, a team that wins 90 games in a season would have 42 games of WAR value -- the 48 games that a team full of replacements would win, plus 42 "wins above replacement."

One legitimate criticism of WAR is that it misses by a little. One of WAR's virtues is that it doesn't miss by much. But it does miss by enough to be questionable. For example, as the Angels won 89 games last year, we would expect their WAR to total 41. Instead, by the Baseball-reference.com version of WAR, it totaled 46.3. If the Angels had won at the rate that WAR would predict, they would have finished with 94 wins, which would have put them into the playoffs. In the world according to WAR, the Oakland Athletics would have won 95 instead 94, the Texas Rangers would have won the same 93 and the Baltimore Orioles would have won 87 instead of 93. So, the Angels would have been in and the Orioles would have been out.

That's a pretty different world. So, WAR raises at least as many questions about itself as it answers about player value, and that should be kept in mind as we put it to work. It's a long way from being perfected.

It's also a lot of fun. So, back to the fun. Let's look at the Angels.

So far in 2013, Angels pitchers have produced 6.6 WAR, which works out to 12.2 WAR over 162 games. As it happens, Angels pitchers produced 4.8 WAR for all of last season. If WAR is to be believed, then Angels pitchers actually are better this year than last year, even though they rank 11th in American League ERA this year (4.23) and they ranked eighth last year (4.02).

At the end of last season, the Angels let go of Dan Haren (-0.4 WAR in 2012) and Ervin Santana (-1.3) and, essentially, replaced them with Jason Vargas and Joe Blanton. Vargas, with a 1.9 WAR so far this year, projects out to about 3.7 WAR over a full season, though we know we're not getting that because he'll miss about six weeks with a blood clot. Blanton has a -0.4 WAR, which works out to about -0.8 over the full season. Between Vargas and Blanton, the Angels would realize about 3.0 WAR over the full season, an improvement of 4.7 WAR over the combination of Haren and Santana in 2012.

C.J. Wilson finished with 0.7 WAR last year and now has 1.3 WAR in 2013, which would take him to about 2.5 over the full season. That's an upgrade of 1.8 WAR. Jered Weaver last year had 4.0 WAR and, so far this year, has 1.4 WAR, which would get him to about 2.8 over the full season. But Weaver is the reverse side of Vargas in that the former already has been injured and we might expect him to outpace the WAR he has established so far. The way Weaver is going lately, he might match last year's 4.0.

Last year, the Angels brought in Zach Greinke as a short timer and he gave them 1.4 WAR. He's pitching across town now and the Angels don't have an obvious replacement. However, Jerome Williams is good enough for WAR purposes. Last season, Williams totaled -0.2 WAR. This year, so far, he is 0.6, which rates out to about 1.2. That's an improvement of 1.4, which was precisely Greinke's contribution last season.

Ernesto Frieri last year totaled 1.4 WAR and he has 0.9 WAR so far this year, so he would come in around 1.8 for a small increase. But Scott Downs is showing a big increase, up from 0.4 WAR last year to 1.2 so far this season. He would pace out to about 2.4 WAR this year, a full two games better for a situational left-handed reliever. Even Garrett Richards works out better this season. Last year, he finished with -1.0 WAR and this year he projects to about -0.2 WAR.

Taking the next five Angels pitchers by appearances in 2013, we find Michael Kohn (0.7 so far), Kevin Jepsen (-0.0), Dane De La Rosa (0.5), Robert Coello (0.0) and Sean Burnett (0.6). They total 1.8, which would bring them in around 3.5. Compare them with the Angels next five pitchers from 2012 in appearances: Jason Isringhausen (0.1 in 2012), Jepsen (0.4), Jordan Walden (0.3), LaTroy Hawkins (0.0) and Hisanori Takahashi (-0.3). They total 0.5. So, the Angels, considering the solid back of their staff, are about 3.0 WAR better than last year.

Assuming that the discrepancies involving Weaver and Vargas will come out in the wash, the body of pitchers so far considered would come in right about 12 WAR better than last year. As to the remaining pitchers from each year, the guys who come and go, the Angels are about two WAR worse in 2013.

Position play, WAR tells us, is where the Angels really suffer this year in comparison with 2012. Defensively, in particular, WAR tells us exactly what the eye tells us. The Angels are ghastly this year. In 2012, they totaled 4.6 defensive WAR. In 2013, they are -4.7 WAR, which comes to about -9.0 over the full season. Perhaps WAR is telling us something about the relationship between pitching and defense, because the common measures tell us that the Angels pitching is worse this year, while WAR tells us that the pitching actually is better and it's the defense that's worse.

Offensively, WAR tells us that the Angels are a little worse than last year. Their offensive WAR last year was 36.7 and their offensive WAR so far this year is 17.1, which paces out to about 33. The less mysterious measurements tell us that that the Angels are more than a little worse offensively this year. The Angels are down from third in the league to seventh in runs, down from third to fifth in OPS and their OPS-plus is down from 116 to 111.

The big differences are found in individual position players, where we see enormous declines in WAR. That 12-game improvement in WAR among the pitchers is much more than offset by a projected decline of about 20 WAR among the position players.

Erick Aybar last year was 4.3 WAR and he's 0.2 WAR so far in 2013, so he paces out to a four-game WAR drop. Alberto Callaspo has dropped from 3.5 WAR to 0.0 WAR, so his decline is that large. By letting go of Torii Hunter, who had a 5.8 WAR last year, and replacing him with Josh Hamilton, who is 0.2 this year, the Angels figure to be another five WAR in the red. Albert Pujols did 5.0 WAR last year and he's 0.8 so far in 2013, a drop of about 3.5 over the full season. Mike Trout has followed last year's incredible 10.9 WAR with 3.9 so far this year. He paces out to about 7.7 WAR in 2013, another drop of three games. Were these players to maintain their WAR levels, they would end up being about 20 WAR worse in 2013 than 2012.

All of that is somewhat offset by improvements from other players. Howie Kendrick, who finished last year with 3.1 WAR, already has 2.8 in 2013 and would come in around 5.5, an increase of about 2.5 games. Chris Iannetta finished 1.4 in 2013 and already has 1.3 in 2013, so he figures to come in about 2.5, an increase of about one game. Peter Bourjos last year had 1.2 WAR and he has 1.3 already this year, so he would be about 1.2 better over this full season, except that he can't stay in the lineup. Mark Trumbo, 2.7 WAR last year, is 1.5 so far this year, so he would come out about the same. So, we see an improvement of about five WAR in 2013 among these players.

But when we go to the secondary position players, we see mostly decline. The next five Angels position players by appearance in 2012 were Kendrys Morales (2.2), Maicer Izturis (0.3), Vernon Wells (0.6), Bobby Wilson (0.9) and John Hester (-0.1). They total up to 3.9 WAR in 2012. The next five of those players for 2013 are J.B. Shuck (0.3), Brendan Harris (-0.6), Hank Conger (1.0), Luis Jimenez (-0.0) and Andrew Romine (-0.3). They add up to 0.4, which paces out to about 0.8, another drop of three games from the comparable players of 2012.

Putting it all together, WAR tells us that the Angels, over 162 games, would be going on four games worse offensively (down from 36.7 WAR in 2012 to about 33 this year), about seven or eight games better in their pitching (up from 4.8 to 12.2) and about 14 games worse defensively (down from 4.6 to about -9.0). That accounts, give or take, for the 10-game difference to the bad this year for the Angels.

Outside of WAR's suggestion here that pitching really isn't the Angels' problem, which is a little surprising, this quick and dirty study supports much of what we can plainly see by quantifing our qualitative intuitions. We could already tell that Hamilton instead of Hunter has turned out to be a bad exchange. WAR gives us an inkling of how bad. We could already see that Pujols, Callaspo and Aybar aren't as good as they were last year. WAR gives us some purchase on the extent of those declines.

In some respects, though, we're finding WAR quite hard to believe. WAR tells us that Trout is -1.3 defensively in 2013. Really? This season, the Angels are 10th in American League ERA by starters at 4.43, compared with fifth last year at 4.04. But WAR would have us believe that they get better starts this season. According to WAR, the Angels are a couple of wins better behind the plate this year. That isn't obvious.

WAR certainly is a salty concoction. It makes our discussions, like our food, tastier and more interesting, in the right amounts. In excess, it causes thirst, bloating, high blood pressure and weakening of the bones (osteoporosis), which might also characterize a good many baseball arguments that take WAR as gospel. Perhaps, WAR should be taken with a grain of salt. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it. But it’s not a good main course.

Angels going great, but others are just as good

Since falling to 62-60 on Aug. 19 and all but eliminating themselves from the playoff race, the Angels are 18-7. And it has been barely enough to keep them alive, because Oakland and Baltimore have been as good or better. Now, the Angels are righted with about two weeks left, but Baltimore has a clear schedule advantage for the second wild card.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

When last we left the Angels four weeks ago, they had suffered three weeks of unfathomably poor pitching, lost 13 of 18 and fell from wild card leader only two games down in the AL West to 62-60 and 4 1/2 games short of any playoff spot.

With 12 of their next 15 coming on the road, including a series each at playoff contenders Detroit and Oakland, the obituaries were being written for the Angels when they began that run on Aug. 21.

Since then, the Angels are playing about as well as anyone in the game, 18-7, including 11-4 on the road. And they've needed every bit of it. If the Angels were 15-10, we would be saying it's too little too late. The Angels would be about six games down for the second wild card with three teams to jump. As it is, they are 2 1/2 behind Baltimore for the second wild card, and no one stands between them.

One has to love how the Angels are playing while also lamenting that it hasn't helped very much. Often enough, a club goes on a hot streak and some feeble nemesis helps out by going on a cold streak. But it doesn't go like that for the Angels.

All the clubs the Angels are or would be trying to catch are as hot as they are, including AL West leader Texas (17-9), first wild card leader Oakland (19-7) and second wild card leader Baltimore (16-9). Thus, for going 18-7, the Angels have only gained 1 1/2 games in the AL West (they are down 7 1/2 games now), they have gained only one game on the first wild card (they are down 4 1/2 games) and they have gained two games on the second wild card (they are down 2 1/2 games).

But the good news runs deeper for the Angels, because they now have their starting rotation back in order, making those wins possible. Since Aug. 19, Zack Greinke has a 1.70 ERA, eating 37 innings with his five starts. Since then, Dan Haren has a 2.35 ERA in five starts covering 30 2/3 innings. Jered Weaver has a 2.73 ERA in four starts. Ervin Santana has a 3.00 ERA in five starts. The worst of the lot is C.J. Wilson, who has a 4.40 ERA in his last five starts, but the Angels have won all five of those starts.

And, again, the Angels will need all of it to stay in the race to the end, because outside factors are not in their favor. It seems they never are this year.

The Angels play three at home this week against the Texas Rangers, then three at home against the Chicago White Sox. That’s two division leaders. Baltimore, the team the Angels are trying to catch, stays on the road this week for three at Seattle and three at Boston. That’s two teams that are playing out the string. Next week, the Orioles go home for four against Toronto and three against Boston. The Angels start next week at home against Seattle, then they go to Texas for three.

Remember, the Angels need to gain 2 ½ games on the Orioles, basically in the next two weeks. Those schedules are not promising. The Orioles will close out their season with three at Tampa Bay, while the Angels will close with three at Seattle. But it’s hard to believe the Angels will be in striking distance as the last series begins.

The playoff race is shaping up as something of a hard luck story for the Angels. The moment they went to the trouble to trade for Greinke, the pitching rotation tanked. Then, the Angels righted themselves and went on a roll, but everyone they needed to catch matched them practically win for win since Aug. 20. So, now the Angels have crawled into view of the playoffs, but that view is obstructed by Baltimore’s very easy schedule.

Wait ‘til next year for the Angels? Probably, but with all the talent they’ve put together, we’ve still got two interesting weeks of this year. This club still has a chance. It just isn’t a very good one, unless Baltimore unaccountably collapses.

Angels starters sputter through August

On paper, and often on the field, the Angels have featured one of the best starting rotations in baseball, from the back to the front. Now, all of a sudden, their veteran starting superstars are falling behind hitters. The Angels have 40 games to climb into the wild-card playoff, but the next 15 are critical.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

Less than a week after the non-waiver trading deadline, the Angels had all of the baseball world thinking they were about as good as it gets. And they were.

The Angels were, and remain, a club with jolting offensive capacity, very good defense and a starting rotation of front-line talent.

But there was something about the Angels that gave pause going back into July. Because the Texas Rangers are so strong atop the AL West, the Angels were going to the playoffs as a wild-card team, meaning as a road team. And July taught the Angels that they would not succeed that way. They lost three of four at Detroit, two of three at New York, then two of three at home against Tampa Bay.

To succeed in the playoffs, the Angels knew they needed another piece, so they added Zack Greinke. We think they overpaid for Greinke because a wild-card playoff position isn't worth the talent they gave up. However, we totally understand the serious motivation for bringing in Greinke. This organization is trying hard to win.

The next big indicator of road warring would be a four-game series at Texas July 30-August 2. The Angels won the first two. Good sign. And at the end of business on July 31, they were 57-47, a mere two games out of first place in the American League West. This space said right as the series started that the Angels had no chance of catching Texas. But after winning those first two games, the Angels could have left Arlington tied for first place.

What has happened to the Angels since Aug. 1 almost defies any possibility that it could have been predicted. Veteran pitchers who know how to pitch and who have been top-level producers suddenly are falling behind hitters. The manager, Mike Scioscia, says the pitchers aren't "controlling counts."

Since that high point of their season, the Angels now have lost 13 of their last 18, falling all the way to nine games behind the Rangers. Indeed, the Angels also have fallen beneath the Oakland Athletics in the division and the wild card race, where the Angels led at that high point. But they now have dropped also behind Detroit, Tampa Bay and Baltimore and they must now make up 4 1/2 games just to nudge into the second wild card.

In August, C.J. Wilson is 0-2 in four starts, allowing 24 runs (20 earned) in 21 2/3 innings. Opposing hitters are torching him for a .326 batting average and a .972 OPS. In August, Dan Haren is 0-2 in three starts, allowing 13 runs (11 earned) in 13 innings. Against 61 batters in August, Haren has allowed four homers. In August, Greinke is 1-1 in four starts, but he has allowed 20 runs (all earned) in 25 innings, allowing a .316 batting average and an .892 OPS.

Even the great Jered Weaver has kicked in a bad start, giving up nine runs in three innings on Aug. 17 against Tampa Bay. Oddly, the only reliable Angels starter in August is Ervin Santana, who is 1-0 three starts with 19.1 innings, a 3.26 ERA, and a .192 OBA.

Haren has struggled all year with a bad back. Wilson's trouble is more recent, as is Greinke's. On the whole, then, the collapse of the Angels' starting rotation is a very new development. Perhaps, also, it is to be short-lived.

But it can't live for any longer if the Angels are to remain serious contenders. They now face 12 of their next 15 on the road, including trips to Detroit and Oakland for wild-card scraps. One hates to think of the Angels pitchers, with their recent failures, taking on the green monster in Fenway Park, but that's the task, Tuesday through Thursday.

If these starting pitchers don't come around right now, the Angels are going to bury themselves in a hurry. Kind of a strange ultimatum for a pitching staff that has always been four deep in quality pitchers (if not quality results), then added a fifth.

Of all that might have side-tracked the Angels this year, is it going to end up being big-salaried starting pitchers losing track of the strike zone and throwing up home runs? Sadly, we might soon find out.

Angels go way too deep for Greinke

If the Angels go to the playoffs at all, they're going in as a wild card team facing a one-game elimination. Then, if they win that game, they go to the next round of playoffs handicapped. So, the Angels just gave up three prospects to acquire Zack Greinke in a bid for the one-game playoff berth. We're thinking they gave up too much.

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The expanded playoffs in baseball will add a new layer of one-and-done urgency to the postseason. But what will it do to the trade deadline?

Under the new format, we get two wild-card teams instead of one, which has the welcomed effect of diluting the wild-card entry. Before, wild card teams entered the playoffs on exactly the same footing as division winners, so they won their fair share of the world championships. The commissioner has attempted to redress that by splitting the wild card between two teams and making them duke it out in one game. Now, at least, the wild card winner has to jump through a couple hoops. After winning that game, it's on to the road against the league's best regular season record, and down an ace pitcher from the wild-card game.

Put in short, a wild-card position isn't as valuable as it was just last year. Until now, clubs could calculate whether it actually would be advantageous to go to the playoffs as a wild card, rather than as a division winner. Now, there's no question about it. You're not going in as a wild card unless there is absolutely no other way.

It stands to reason, also, that a team looking at a one-game playoff as its only realistic postseason possibility can't be recklessly trading off prospects for two-month star rentals. A one-game playoff simply doesn't secure a team in the playoffs enough to make the acquisition worthwhile. Who would be silly or desperate enough to trade off good prospects for two months of a player who can't get you any more than a one hit-or-miss playoff game?

Enter now the Angels, who traded three prospects to Milwaukee last week for pitcher Zack Greinke. Maybe the Angels think they have some kind of realistic shot of overtaking Texas to win the American League West, but that is not a widely shared opinion. In order to believe the Angels have any kind of a chance to overtake the Rangers, you would have to believe that the Rangers suddenly aren't going to be what they have been for two years -- a solid .590 club that's strong in all aspect of the game.

Most likely, the Rangers will finish up with their usual 37-25 pace, come in with 96 wins and take the division. Even if the Rangers were to slip, maybe go 31-31 the rest of the way, the Angels still would have to finish 35-25 just to catch them. Put it this way: the Angels are pretty good in their last 60 games, 37-23, and that surge has still enabled them to cut only three games off their gap, reducing it from eight games to five.

So, the Angels aren't in that game, and they haven't been for three years. Since the 2009 season, the Angels have spent one day after July 4 in first place. That was July 5, 2011, when they were tied with Texas. But the Angels lost the next day and they fell five games off within two weeks.

Their on a different flight, a tight fight with four other clubs for the privilege of going to a one-game playoff. Right now, Oakland (55-46) holds the top wild card spot, followed by the Angels (55-47) with the second. Following right behind them are Detroit (54-48), Baltimore (53-49) and Tampa Bay (53-49). That's the league the Angels are in right now. Every tiny edge will make a difference in a race like this.

At some point, though, one has to balance the benefit of winning this one-game wild card spot this year against the potential for lost opportunities from dealing away minor leaguers with good long-term prospects. All three of the players the Angels gave up are quality, young Class AA players, guys who are getting it done against the other top prospects. Their numbers indicate that all three could be quality big league players. Not stars, probably, but an everyday shortstop and two pitchers who can win in the big leagues. How many wins have the Angels traded away for a one-game playoff?

If you're going to the playoffs as a division winner, that's a different story. You can't be eliminated so flukishly. Somebody has to beat you three times. You'll trade solid prospects for that chance. But one wonders how much is too much when you're trading solid prospects for a playoff spot that goes -- poof!  -- in one game.

Greinke is here for two months, unless the Angels play for him as a free agent this winter. But if his long-term signature were their goal, the Angels could have waited until November and signed Greinke without giving up prospects.

Unquestionably, acquiring Greinke makes the Angels better. If they can make it past the one-game playoff, the Angels can go to their playoff series against the Yankees with a starting rotation headed by Greinke, C.J. Wilson and Dan Haren, then they can still come back with Jered Weaver in Game 4.

But still. It's a one-game playoff. If you run into Justin Verlander on one of those days, you're done and you never had a chance. Any opponent who has a shut-down ace is going to use him in that game. You're not just facing one-game elimination. You're likely to be facing an elite pitcher in a prestige situation. Your chance of getting through that certainly is no better than 50-50. True enough, the Angels now can match any other team's ace -- except Verlander -- three or four times. Unfortunately, the one-game playoff doesn't play to th‏eir depth.

Here's what the Angels gave up for a one-game playoff:

1. Shortstop Jean Segura is a 22-year-old who has conquered every level he has reached offensively. Baseball America ranked Segura the No. 55 overall prospect this preseason. Segura batted .294 this year for the Angels' Class AA team at Arkansas (Texas League), where he held a .749 OPS in a league averaging .723. If minor league numbers are an indication, he could be a big league shortstop approaching an .800 OPS. Nice player. Prospect expert John Sickels ranked Segura as the Angels' third best prospect.

2. Pitcher Johnny Hellwig, 23, a 6-foot-9 right hander pitching for the Angels' club in Arkansas. The profile of a tall youngster with control problems (60 walks and 14 wild pitches in 119 2/3 innings) indicates that he is a project. But he may not be too far away. Among Texas League pitchers with at least 100 innings in 2012, Hellwig was fourth with a 3.38 ERA at the time of the trade. Hellwig was only 5-10 pitching for a terrible offensive team in Arkansas. Young pitchers with tall frames usually struggle with control. If the Brewers can straighten Hellwig out, they'll have a nice pitcher on their hands in a couple years. Sickels tabbed Hellwig as the Angels' seventh best prospect.

3. Ariel Pena, a 6-3, 190 pitcher from the Dominican Republic is 23 years old with six years of professional experience and a very solid minor league track record. Pena already is a nice pitcher, striking out 111 in 114 1/3 innings this year for Arkansas, where his 2.99 ERA is the second best in the Texas League among pitchers with 100 or more innings. Sickels named Pena as the Angels' 15th best prospect.

By our reckoning, the Angels have really gone a long way in this Zack Greinke deal. They've upped the ante on this season. It's beyond making the playoffs. The Angels are making a bid to be strong all the way through their rotation all the way through the playoffs.

But it all could go ka-boom in one game, maybe a game that nobody was going to win against Verlander or Chris Sale or David Price. Is that little chance worth all those prospects?

The Angels, apparently, have made a different calculation. Their starting rotation already has three front-line guys when they're going well. Adding a fourth gives them that pitcher they were going to cook in the one-game playoff. If they can squeeze through the season and through the one-game playoff, their chance is as good as anyone's because of their starting rotation.

But if they can't get through the one-game playoff, then they've given up three prospects for, essentially, nothing. And if they can't even get into the playoffs after trading three prospects for Greinke, that's even worse.

When the Angels make the kind of deal they've made for Zack Greinke, we can't say they aren't trying. We might say, though, that they're trying a little too hard.