The team to beat

Short series or not, Angels clearly the better team here

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- They call these things "short" series, meaning they're not quite as long as the League Championships or the World Series. Though, if you go by the average lengths of some of the games in these monsters, just one of them is not all that much shorter than the entire Godfather trilogy.

Still, these divisional series are a different deal, for sure. They're the first to three wins, so there's not a lot of time or room for mistakes. A couple of hot hitters, or a couple of strong pitching performances and these things can get scary in a heartbeat. Ask Bob Brenly.

But even though they're "short," that doesn't mean baseball's best-of-five divisional series are always a crapshoot. Take the American League Division Series between the Anaheim Angels and the New York Yankees.

The Angels lead this series after Friday's thrilling come-from-behind win not because of good luck or a particularly hot hand. Anaheim is within a game of becoming the first team to knock off New York in the first round since 1997 not because the Yankees have been a little off.

At the risk of sounding like Kreskin the Obvious here, the Angels lead this series because they have been the better team, "short" series or not.

They've outpitched the Yankees. They've certainly outhit them. They've also a lot of other outverbed New York, like outhustled and outsmarted and outrun and outhearted.

The Angels have, simply, outplayed the Yankees in just about every phase of the game.

"The Yankees are a very good team," Angels first baseman Scott Spiezio was saying Friday after the Angels, down 6-1 in the middle of the third, came back to win 9-6 at Edison Field, "and we respect them.

"But anytime you have success, it builds confidence. And when you build confidence, you play better. I think we're a ... confident team right now."

The Angels are absolutely bursting with the good stuff right now. They were down 3-0 before the bench was warmed up Friday, down 6-1 in another blink, yet they battled every at-bat, scraped together a run here and there, took chances on the basepaths whenever possible and waited for a huge double from Darin Erstad in the eighth that finally put them ahead. Then they watched Tim Salmon, next up, jack out a two-run homer that sealed the win.

They Angels went down 1-2-3 in the first inning. It didn't happen again. They don't always come back all the way. But, if they get behind ...

"Don't turn the channel," shortstop David Eckstein warned, "no matter what the score is."

Here's how good the Angels have been in this series: They are hitting .369 off the Yankees' supposedly superior pitching staff (the Yanks are hitting .265). The Angels have eight homers to the supposedly superior Yanks' six.

Anaheim has a terrible 6.92 ERA. The Yankees have an even worse 7.62 ERA in the three games.

The numbers, of course, tell only part of it. The Angels have been more patient at the plate (averaging just five strikeouts a game). They're more aggressive once they get on base. They're better in the field.

None of this is new. The Angels hit better than the Yankees -- heck, better than anyone -- during the regular season, had a better ERA than everyone but the A's and struck out a ton less than anyone (especially the Yankees). They fielded better, too, than New York.

True, the Angels won only 99 games compared to the Yanks' 103. But the Angels didn't have Tampa Bay, Baltimore and Toronto to kick around in their division, either.

The one big edge the Yankees had on the Angels coming into this postseason was experience. The Yanks had played 83 postseason games since the last time Anaheim appeared in the playoffs, way back in 1986.

But if Anaheim has proven anything in this series, it's that the postseason edge is greatly exaggerated. They hung with the Yankees in the cauldron of postseason pressure, Yankee Stadium. And Friday, in front of the simian-inspired fans of Southern California, the Angels showed that they could come back against those mighty Yanks and win a game that was absolutely critical to win.

It's clear now that the Yankees -- these Yankees, at least -- can be beat, short series or not. Give 'em seven games. Give 'em nine. Let 'em play the best-of-21.

The long and short of it is this: The Angels are the better team.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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