AL West title won't be enough for juggernaut Angels

Mark Teixeira was brought in from Atlanta to help the Angels win their second World Series this decade. Christian Petersen/Getty Images Jonah Freedman's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Jonah. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Jonah Freedman on Twitter

It's hard to imagine that a team that plays just down the road from Disneyland and is one of the most fan-friendly in baseball could be scary, but the Los Angeles Angels have been frighteningly good this season. At 71-43 they have the best record in baseball, are on pace for the franchise's first 100-win season and lead the AL West by 10.5 games -- an advantage more than twice as big as that of any other first-place team -- and yet everyone associated with the Angels believes they can play even better.

"I don't think we're playing up to our full capacity yet," says manager Mike Scioscia. "Our pitching staff has been there all year for us, and our offense is coming around. But we feel we're a good club that's championship caliber. I have a lot of confidence in this group of guys."

Scioscia's optimism is both well-founded and an ominous sign for opponents who have offered little resistance to what may be the most talented Angels squad in club history. There are no holes in the lineup, a lethal starting rotation that boasts a pair of current All-Stars in Ervin Santana and Joe Saunders as well as staff ace John Lackey, a solid bullpen fronted by Cy Young contender Francisco Rodriguez and tons of depth coming off the bench. With last month's addition of slugging first baseman Mark Teixeira to pair in the lineup with Vladimir Guerrero, the Angels solidified their status as the favorite come October.

"I've played with a lot of talented teams, but they've always had pieces missing," says longtime Angels outfielder Garrett Anderson, a member of four division-title teams and a World Series champion in L.A. "All around, I think this is the best team I've been on."

The current roster, built by GM Tony Reagins and his predecessor, Bill Stoneman, has all the right pieces, and is good enough to win the Angels' second World Series title since 2002. This is nothing new for the Halos, who have been consistently loading up on talent (and payroll) every year since 2004, when billionaire Arte Moreno effectively took control of the franchise. They've added key parts each offseason and have become the class of their division.

Moreno is the rarest of rarities in professional sports: a fan's owner, a player's owner and a coach's owner, all at the same time. His first course of action after he bought the team from the the Walt Disney Co. was to lower beer prices at Angel Stadium. He then gave the green light to acquire that offseason's marquee free agent, Guerrero, for five years and $70 million. It was a sign of things to come, as the Arizona-born billboard magnate brashly boasted that his team would be a contender every season.

And so it has come to be. The Halos have been to the playoffs three times in the past four seasons, and they're a lock to get there again this fall. Moreno has created a culture of winning that is unprecedented in the history of the franchise. The Angels are serious players with every big name on the free-agent market, their farm system is one of the best in baseball and their coaching staff, under Scioscia, is perhaps the game's most respected.

"When you have an owner who is committed to achieving as much as Arte is, that increases everything to where everyone who works for this organization is excited to go the ballpark," says Scioscia. "When you get everybody on the same page, good things happen."

And yet there's a very simple, if disconcerting, argument to make: The team that rode K-Rod, hot bats and the Rally Monkey to the World Series title in '02 was probably less talented than every Angels roster of the Moreno Era, yet it is the only one to finish on top.

"The postseason's a crapshoot," admits Anderson, who has played in 32 postseason games with the Angels. "If you get hot you can run through some teams. I've been on both sides of that. In '02 we got hot and we went through teams that were better than us. We know that. [Since then] we lost to some very good teams. We just got beat."

In the Angels' three playoff appearances since then they've been eliminated each time by the eventual World Series champions: first by the karma machine that was the miracle Red Sox in '04; then by what Scioscia calls "a buzzsaw" of White Sox pitching in '05; and finally, by a dominating Red Sox squad last October.

While no one in the organization will admit it, that string of postseason disappointments, combined with this year's apparent juggernaut, has given this season a put-up-or-shut-up feel. Moreno has given Reagins and his staff the financial resources to get the players that they believe will keep them competitive, and Moreno isn't ponying up his cash just for division titles.

"Arte Moreno wants to win," says center fielder Torii Hunter, who says he was enticed by the organization last November because of its classy reputation (of course, the $90 million contract helped, too). "Nothing would please him more than winning a World Series. When you've got a guy like that, I want to be a part of that team."

But there are two types of teams that dominate the regular season: ones like the '07 Red Sox that go wall-to-wall and translate their success into the playoffs, and ones like the '01 Mariners, whose record-tying 116 wins seemed inconsequential when they were dominated in the ALCS by the Yankees.

"It's not easy to win a championship," says Reagins, who has been in the Angels front office since 1991. "It took us 40 years; some teams haven't even won one. You need a little luck, too."

That's the only ingredient that the Angels won't be able to control in their championship quest. All the other pieces are in place for a deep October run.

"Knock on wood," Reagins says, "if we maintain our health and have our players play to their capabilities, I like our chances."