ALDS Playoff Preview
(by ED AGNER)

As is pretty evident to all three of our ardent readers (are we even up to three readers yet? Two maybe? Are there two people in the Phil Rippa fan club yet?), we here at VeteranPresence.com are lazy. Sooooo very lazy. I’m starting this on the last Sunday morning of the regular season. So even though the match-ups for the ALDS’s aren’t set yet, I’ve gotta get a-going with this or else we won’t have this done before the first game of the World Series. Yes. We are THAT lazy. So I’m basically going to handicap the field more than anything. Deal with it. And since it’s Sunday morning and I’m antagonizing Ohio State fans about losing to Northwestern (POINTYHEADZ RAWK!!! NERDZ!!!), this may make absolutely no sense. What can you do?

Anaheim Angels - AL West Champs

SEASON OVERVIEW

The Angels started the season on fire, fell apart, caught fire, fell apart, fell into mediocrity, then caught fire over the past month to overtake the A’s to win the AL West - well, with a special thank you to Ken Macha, anyway. Despite losing OF Jose Guillen (to chronic stupidity) and 2B Adam Kennedy (to an ugly ACL disaster) for the stretch-run and through the playoffs, the Angels made the run to the AL West title thanks to Vlad Guerrero’s unconscious play that should get him the MVP - unless you believe all of Ichiro’s sissy hits mean something and if you do, please don’t talk to me.

STRENGTHS:

- Vladimir Friggin’ Guerrero. ‘Round about Labor Day, Vlad just said, hop on my back, we’re doing some October time. Sure, one would think you would give Vlad the Barry Bonds treatment and don’t give him anything close to a strike - hey, it’s not like he wouldn’t swing, anyway. Well, one who isn’t Ken Macha would think that, I guess. I’m thinking Vlad will get tired of seeing ball four over the next week or so. Then again, Terry Francona is in the mix here so...who can be sure.

- Offense: The Angels have a nicely balanced line-up with pesky slap hitters at the top and bottom (David Eckstein, Darrin Erstadt, Chone Figgins, Jeff Davanon, Los Hermano’s Molina) and some boppers that are hard to work around in the middle (Vlad, Garret Anderson, Troy Glaus). No, they’re not a Sabergeeks dream team since no one likes the walk here, but...a hit is as good as a walk, too. Or something. Disregard that, since you’ll probably use that to support Ichiro or something. Stupid Ichiro. Anyway, offensively, this is a team that would strike the most fear in me if I was a fan of any of the other three AL teams. Sure, they won’t make you choke one out when looking at their stats on a spreadsheet but if you do that I’d rather that you just click your Home button right now, sicko.

- SCRAP~! My Lord, do the Angels bring the scrap - Eckstein, Figgins, Davanon, Los Molina’s and Erstadt? Yessh. Yeah. No question these guys will run through some walls.

- Pen: Yeah, they still have a great back-end of a pen with Percival (who’s been touched up more this year than in 2002), F-Rod, Brendan Donnelly and Scot Shields. It’s not as deep of a pen as the world champ model. But it won’t blow many leads and it allows Mike Scioscia to shorten the game for a suspect staff. And that’s a BIG plus in October.

WEAKNESSES:

- The Angels made their 2002 run to the title on six basic concepts - great defense, solid starting pitching, great bullpen work, offensive balance, aggressive play on the basepaths, competent bench players. This year, the Angels only have three of those elements. There’s no need to question that Angels will be aggressive on the basepaths. I am all ready to shoot out my TV screen as McCarver gushes on the SCRAP~! and the playoffs haven’t even started yet. The end of the pen is as lights out as any in the playoff picture, no question. The O is a shade less solid than the 2002 model, but the 2002 model had no one remotely as good as Vlad either, so that’s pretty much even. But the three missing elements?

- Starting pitching: The Angels figure to go with a playoff rotation of Bartolo Colon, Kelvim Escobar, Jarrod Washburn and John Lackey. Well, it’s a sight prettier than the Yankees rotation, I guess but...Eww. You would think going with a three man rotation of Colon, Escobar and Washburn in this round would be most ideal, especially since that would mean not exposing Lackey to the Red Sox or Yankees. Then again, the Yankees and Red Sox are more than familiar with Colon and Escobar too, so...what do I know? On the plus-side, Colon was gold in the post-season in his Cleveland tenure, Escobar is a mixed bag with flashes of brilliance and Washburn...well, I’m certain there are many Angels fans who remember his 2002 post-season fondly. 2002 was a long time ago. But any way you slice it, the rotation is not a plus even if Colon has been on fire over the past month. But if that pen can make every game a 5 inning affair, watch out.

- And then comes the DEFENSE...First off, let’s get this straight, Theo exaggerated the value of defense as a way to get himself out of the fire for getting rid of Nomar. OK? That said, defense is more valuable in the post-season when runs are more scarce. And this is not a good defensive team. Oh, no it’s not. Chone Figgins is still learning how to play 3rd. David Eckstein...well, he tries really hard at short. You might have heard that he’s a bit on the scrappy side. That doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s not really...ya know...good with the glove. Second base is...well, when you think Enrique Wilson might be an upgrade, you’ve got some problems there. Erstadt is...umm...wasn’t he supposed to win a gold glove at first? And then there’s the OF. Oh, man. The Yankees OF defense is probably worse, maybe. And the Sox have Manny’s adventurous play and Damon’s lack of arm along with the prospect of Kevin Millar bumbling around out there too. But any time you face the prospect of Garret Anderson as your starting CF, you better hope your pitchers can get a ton of K’s. Angels fans had better hope.

- Bench. Thanks to the late losses of Kennedy and Guillen, the Angels have some holes in their line-up that aren’t pretty. Second base being partially manned by Shane Halter? Curtis Pride as their 4th OFer? Those aren’t huge factors and yet...who would you rather have as a back-up 2B: Pokey Reese, Enrique Wilson or Shane Halter? As your 4th OFer: Dave Roberts, Kenny Lofton, Curtis Pride? Exactly. And beyond them, that bench is even uglier. Look away. Look away.

OUTLOOK

If there’s one team to fear in October, it’s the Angels. I can’t imagine either the Yankees or Red Sox being overly-thrilled with the prospect of facing Vlad in a short series. I can EASILY see the Angels taking the Yankees. And I can see the Angels upsetting the Sox if a Schilling game goes weird. Any sort of competent work from the Angels starting staff - or if Colon pitches in the post-season like he did for Cleveland - and we may all begin to revile that frickin’ rally monkey and those god-forsaken thunder stixx all over again. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Boston Red Sox - AL Wild Card Winners

SEASON OVERVIEW

Started on fire, fell apart thanks to a whole bunch of bad luck, traded off Nomar and gave a lot of talk about defense, luck evened out, Sox took fire in August and September and ran away with the Wild Card. Oh, and Curt Schilling makes the Sox the manliest team in baseball. Just ask him.

STRENGTHS:

- Curt Schilling. No. He shouldn’t be the AL Cy Young winner. No. He’s not the post-season pitcher media dolts want you to believe. No. He’s not a good man to be around. But in a 5 game series with the prospect that he will go at least twice (and possibly 3 times, depending on how the off-days are stacked), Schilling is death. Death.

- Manny Ramirez/David Ortiz. Vlad is the AL MVP thanks to the last month of the season he put up. That takes the award from Sheffield. Manny and Ortiz canceled each other out by being a two-headed monster. Them’s the breaks. Screw the awards, the Sox are trying to win a championship and thanks to the Ramirez/Ortiz monster, the Sox have as good of a shot as anyone.

- Bullpen. Really, this is the best top-to-bottom pen in the playoff hunt. Sure, they don’t have a lights-out set-up guy like Frankie Rodriquez, but the selling point here is depth. Keith Foulke is one of the best closers in the biz, Mike Timlin, Scott Williamson and Alan Embree are able set-up guys and Mike Myers is LOOGY-licious. Throw in the fact that one of Wakefield or Bronson Arroyo (or both) will be in the pen at least for the first round, and this is the deepest pen going.

- OBP. When Orlando Cabrerra is your only regular who isn’t proficient at getting on base, you won’t have to worry about runs too much. Sure, this Sox offense isn’t as good as last years’ model, but it’s fine enough IN ADDITION TO all the defensive hoohah to make the Sox frightening.

- Bench Depth. Pokey Reese has his uses. I bet he’s a good guy to have around to tell Curt Schilling how manly he is. I assume he can braid Manny’s hair. If a bat boy is busy, Pokey can get you a pine tar rag pretty quickly. Umm...oh, yeah. He can field too. That’s good since Mark Bellhorn makes too many Sox fans think of Todd Walker in the field. As long as Pokey isn’t allowed to bat, he has some value. Dave Roberts provides speed off the bench and good OF defense. Doug Mirabelli is a capable catcher who can catch the knuckler and has some pop. And Doug Misspelling...is John Olerud without the batting helmet. All in all, that’s a nice mix, really.

WEAKNESSES

- Rotation depth. Yeah, we know all about Schilling. If he can go three times, the Sox shouldn’t have much worries in this round. You don’t figure on a 37 year old going three times in a week though, but if he could...Hoo boy! Beyond Schilling, you’ve got Pedro Martinez, who’s faded down the stretch, and Derek Lowe, who hasn’t been worth all the bother. If, for some god unknown reason, the Sox want to go with a fourth starter here, they’d be better off going with Arroyo than Wakefield. Maybe. Since it looks like the Sox would PROBABLY get the Angels in the first round, having Wakefield in the pen would be a better option. Just the same, this is not the strength Sox fans envisioned when Schilling was traded for - thanks to Pedro’s poor last month of the season. It’s a factor that will hurt the Sox more if they get to a seven game series, but it’s still a factor in the short series if something goes weird in one of Schilling’s games.

- OF Defense. Sure, we heard all the talk about how Theo shored up the infield defense in the Nomar trade. And I suppose that’s valid. But then there’s the OF defense too. Johnny Damon can’t throw and has lost a half-step in center. Trot Nixon is coming back off of leg and back injuries. Manny Ramirez...well...remember when he dove to cut off Johnny Damon’s throw? Yeah. And then you’ve got the chance of Kevin Millar playing RF against lefties. Yeah, that’s not pretty. It’s not the worst thing in the world either. Hey, it’s hard to find weaknesses here. Gimme a break.

- Speed. Yeah, I’m reaching to find a third weakness. Damon isn’t the speedster he was, but he can take a bag if need be. Dave Roberts, Orlando Cabrerra and Pokey Reese can too. And then you’ve got a lot of slowfoots. Casey Stengel’s big bugaboo was staying out of the double play. Big guys who hit well enough but can’t run you can live with. Slap hitters who live on infield singles you can gladly live with. The key is to mix and match the guys so that one particular type doesn’t follow the other enough so that it doesn’t result in a ton of double plays. This Sox line-up against a guy with a good sinker...yeah, you can get a ton of double plays. Of course, they can also hit a ton of homers too, making the double play ball kinda unimportant. Yeah, I’m reaching.

OUTLOOK

Look, you’ve got Schilling going at least twice in a five game set. I see the Angels having the potential to beat any team in the post-season (and actually, I would be really intrigued by an Angels-Sox series), but there’s no good reason to expect the Sox will get knocked out in this round. The Sox have the best (and probably only) weapon to take out the Angels here and have more than enough offense to hang with the Twins if need be. Being able to shorten the rotation here is key. All you need is Schilling to do his thing and hope to mash out one more. It’s pretty simple, really. Unless something weird happens in a Schilling start, Sox fans can go ahead and buy your ALCS tickets.

Minnesota Twins - AL Central Champs

SEASON OVERVIEW

Started slow, tread water for most of the first half, realized they played in the AL Central, got hot thanks to Johan Santana, ran away from the pack thanks to everyone else in the division being too bad, too stupid or too young to compete.

STRENGTHS

- JOHAN SANTANA. In a better world, Santana is the AL Cy Young winner. That world is a world you believe in when you are young. I am old and cynical, thus I believe Curt Schilling will win the Cy just to cheese me off. Sports writers are idiots (except for Dave Hogg, of course), deal with it. Anyway, word out of the Lesser White North is that Ron Gardenhire wants to use Santana three times in the ALDC (if need be). And I applaud that. Santana is the Twins only chance of knocking off either the Yankees or Red Sox here. You play for today in the playoffs. Today is pretty rosy when you’ve got Santana on the mound.

- Youth. OK, I’m stretching here already. The Twins are basically a nice bunch of youngish players who can do some things really well. They’ve got like 7 billion guys in their system who are all essentially replaceable and all do the same thing - they’re all above average and...ya know, nice; field OK, run a bit, has some pop, mostly white. None of them are a Manny Ramirez or Gary Sheffield or Vlad Guerrero, but none of them flat out suck - well, maybe except for Jacque Jones. Torii Hunter can field and has some pop, like a quasi-Mike Cameron. Lew Ford and Mike Cuddyer and Justin Morneau and Matt LeCroy are all very white and...have their purposes. If you got their rookie card you’ve got about...25 cents coming your way one day. Shannon Stewart is umm...you know...kinda veteranny, relatively, and has some skills but none of which are particularly as valuable as people think/thought. And then there’s Cory Koskie who, well, he’s just waiting to end his career in Oakland or Boston or somewhere where people understand the value of his OBP. In short, this is just a nice collection of guys who...umm...ya know, aren’t old or rich and won’t break down but ESPN goobers will point out as being overwhelmed even though they’ve all been to the playoffs 3 times now. Let’s just move along, OK?

- End of the Pen. Joe Nathan had a nice year as closer while Juan Rincon and J.C. Romero set him up well enough. Give ‘em a lead come the 7th or 8th and the Twins can take a game from any of the playoff teams. It’s the former part of that which will be difficult.

WEAKNESSES

- Rotation. If you had the Twins in a video game, you’d rig it so that Johan Santana could pitch every game and you could win the World Series. Unfortunately, this is real life and, since the Twins play in a dome, they can’t even hope for a rain-out to help them. In fairness, Brad Radke is...umm...a very poor man’s Mike Mussina and he had a decent little year. Beyond that...well, there’s a reason the Twins are talking about using Santana three times (if possible) in the ALDS.

- Middle infield. Gee, how to generalize so much suck into only three points? While the Twins are respectably loaded in OF talent, they’ve really...well, Christian Guzman and Luis Rivas are...Well, how many ways can you get around calling people sucky? They’re a tandem you generally find in places like Minnesota because they’re: a) relatively cheap; and b) not very good. In five years if they’re a tandem again in, say, Cincinnati I would not be surprised. You could do worse than these two, I guess, but why would you want to?

- Middle relief. You know there’s going to be a game where say, Kyle Lohse or Brad Radke has to leave in the 5th or 6th and in will come...Terry Mulholland? Terry Friggin’ Mulholland? I have no hate for Terry Mulholland, honestly, but if you’re on a playoff team and there’s a chance that Terry Mulholland could come in in a crucial situation, would you like your chances? And Terry Mulholland isn’t even the worse member of the Twins middle relief corps. Yeah.

OUTLOOK

In a five game set where you’re seriously considering giving the ball to Johan Santana three times, you’ve got as good of a shot as any team at getting out of the first round. Beyond that is iffy, but you can’t think of beyond that. Since the Twins are getting either the Yankees or Sox, there’s a good shot that Santana can take a game or two and you could even possibly steal another one with your team speed on the home turf. But man, everything has to break exactly right. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it won’t be easy. Can we please take away the AL Central’s right to a division title if it turns ugly? Please?

New York Yankees

OVERVIEW

Started slow, got hot, cruised to an easy lead mid-season, tailed off down the stretch, held off the Sox at the end. Typical Yankee season.

STRENGTHS

- Offense. You could have written this up in March. Wait. I think we did. A-Rod, Sheffield, Jeter, Matsui, Posada, etc. Runs-runs-runs. And that’s without any help from Jason Giambi.

- Mariano Rivera. Yeah, the Sox have beat him about this season. The Yanks aren’t playing the Sox here. Any time you take Mariano Rivera into a post-season, you’ve got a shot.

- Bench. Joe Torre has done some weird things with this post-season roster selections in his time in New York. Considering the results, you can’t quibble much. But Torre has made some real odd-ball selections for post-season roster spots. This year, Brian Cashman has done as much as humanly possible to prevent any more Clay Bellinger incidents from happening. This might be the Yanks best pool of post-season possibles in Torre’s tenure. That is if Torre doesn’t take all 17 first basemen on the Yankees roster, anyway.

WEAKNESSES

- Starting rotation. It’s not so much that this is the most suspect staff, in full, of any in the post-season, it’s that this is the most enigmatic staff in the post-season. Jon Lieber may be the only starter a Yankee fan could feel mostly confident about and...he’s still Jon Lieber, in the end. Mike Mussina had an off year, but got hot the last month of the season. Orlando Hernandez was the Yanks most consistent starter over the second half of the season but he’s had arm troubles in the last two weeks of the regular season - thanks to a arm-slagtastic 120+ pitch performance - so who knows there. Javier Vazquez? Kevin Brown? Who can say? I wouldn’t put money on that - and yet, I wouldn’t bet against them either. But if that staff has to face the Angels...Lookout.

- Bullpen. Beyond Mariano Rivera and Tom Gordon...there’s a lot of batting practice pitchers here. Tanyon Sturtze had a nice last month of the season as a set-up guy, but he’s still Tanyon Sturtze. Paul Quantrill has been positively stinky over the second half of the season and...Felix Heredia or C.J. Nitkowski as the LOOGY? Well, that might get a good rant out of Phil, at least.

- OF Defense. Yeah. I’m reaching here at this point. I would like to actually point out that the infield defense is much improved here, while I’m at this. Really. It is. I know, I’ll miss the Jeter fielding jokes too. But on to the outfield, yuck. Neither Bernie Williams nor Kenny Lofton have any business as a full-time CFer on any club. Sheffield has always been a mostly indifferent RFer with a good arm. And Hideki Matsui just looks worse than he actually is - he still has no arm but “HE GETS RID OF THE BALL QUICKLY” (TM, Michael Kay). Of course, I’m reaching to get a third point, I could have just as easily pointed out team speed too - though the Yanks are faster, on a whole, than the Red Sox. Meh.

OUTLOOK

If the Yanks get the Angels they will get killed. I don’t have any questions about that. Not in the least. I could even see an Angels sweep. If the Yanks get the Twins, they’re the easy favorite. The Twins could take them if everything goes right, but the Yanks are clearly the favorite there. But man, if they get the Angels...I will pray for Phil’s pets.