Angels enter Game 5 with starting-pitching edge for first time in series

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John Lackey took the loss in Game 1 of the ALCS, giving up four runs (two earned) in 5 2/3 innings. AP

Back when I was a high school tennis player in New Jersey in the mid- to late-'90s, the most grievous offense that an opposing coach could commit was to engage in what we used to call "stacking" his lineup. A team's best player was supposed to play first singles, its next-best player was supposed to play second singles, and so on. Once in a while a nefarious coach would put someone who looked as comfortable with a tennis racket as Kirsten Dunst did in the movie Wimbledon at the top of his lineup, thereby matching up his best players with the opponent's inferior ones. This would enrage us, the honor-bound Columbia Cougars that we were, and the worst part was that it sometimes worked.

Stacking, of course, is far from illegal in postseason baseball, but what Angels manager Mike Scioscia has (inadvertently, perhaps) done by using a four-man rotation in the ALCS against the Yankees' three-man rotation is to set up a Game 5 on Thursday evening in which, for the first time in the series, his club appears to have the advantage in the starting pitching matchup, however slight. Angels ace John Lackey had a 3.83 ERA and a 1.27 WHIP this season, to Yankees starter A.J. Burnett's 4.04 and 1.40, and Lackey was particularly good after the All-Star break, when we can assume that he had fully recovered from the elbow inflammation that caused him to sit out the season's first six weeks. In his 15 post-break starts, Lackey went 7-4 with a 3.05 ERA, a 1.15 WHIP and a .239 batting average against. Burnett, in 16 starts after the break, went 5-5 with a 4.33 ERA, a 1.42 WHIP and a .254 BAA.

Lackey, who turns 31 on Friday, also has experience pitching in potential elimination games such as this one. In 2002, when he was a rookie just four days past his 24th birthday, he won Game 7 of the World Series against the Giants, allowing four hits and one earned run over five innings. Burnett's playoff experience consists of the two starts he has made during this postseason -- both wins, yes, but both of which came after CC Sabathia had given the Yankees 1-0 series leads.

On Wednesday, Lackey, who is at times the prototype of the laconic Texan, stressed that he would the following day face a different situation than he did seven years ago. Back then, he said, "I was just trying to help out the older guys and not mess it up, you know. Now I'm kind of one of those older guys that needs to step up and needs to help lead this team to another game. It's definitely a different feeling."

It will certainly be a different feeling for the 32-year-old Burnett, an emotional pitcher who has never before been asked to perform under this sort of pressure. Burnett can often be virtually unhittable, as he was in innings one through four of last Saturday's Game 2. But he can also fall into spells in which he struggles not only to throw strikes, but to throw the ball anywhere near the plate, as he did in a fifth inning on Saturday in which he threw 33 pitches -- 18 strikes and 15 balls -- and allowed four base runners, though only two runs.