Angels won't admit to a hex
ANAHEIM, Calif. – A gentleman this week asked John Lackey(notes) about the Red Sox hex around here, and Lackey couldn't decide on a laugh or a sneer, so he settled on kind of a Texas hybrid.
"Their hex, huh?" he said, his lip curling and his eyes narrowing. "I don't even know how to answer that."
The Los Angeles Angels could win a playoff series against the Boston Red Sox. That might go a long way toward it.
Not only would there be less talk about the hex, there'd be a lot less talk about all those fallow innings, and the overanxious at-bats, and the whiffed squeezes, and the shaky defense, and the three-games-and-outs.
We exaggerate a little. Last year, it was four and out.
A brief history of the Angels against the Red Sox in the playoffs:
1986 ALCS – Lost in 7
2004 ALDS – Lost in 3
2007 ALDS – Lost in 3
2008 ALDS – Lost in 4
Since the day Dave Henderson's fly ball fell just the other side of the left-field wall at old Anaheim Stadium – Oct. 12, 1986 – the Red Sox are 12-1 against the Angels in October.
The Hendu Hex, perhaps.
"Well," Mike Scioscia pointed out, "in '86 a lot of our guys weren't even born."
There aren't a lot of Cubs who are 100, either, but that hasn't stopped them from getting droopy this time of year. This isn't that (Scioscia and the Angels did win a World Series seven years ago), but the current Angels are eager to get out of the first round and bordering on annoyed to be answering for something other than this season. Well, and maybe last.
In Scioscia's view, his '04 and '07 teams were too banged up, too thin, by October to stand with the Red Sox, who won World Series titles both years.
"We just were not the team," he said, "that was going to bring the game on the field we needed to."
Last year, he said, could have gone "either way."
Every big moment, it seemed, found one of his young middle infielders. Erick Aybar(notes) batted .111 and missed a suicide squeeze near the end. Howie Kendrick(notes) batted .118 and struck out seven times. Plays weren't made on defense. There were other issues, but those were the big ones, and the ones that lingered.
After the roll-overs (Angels' perspective) and routs (Red Sox's perspective) earlier in the decade, the Angels were in last year's series. The world changes (perhaps) if Aybar gets the bunt down in the ninth inning of Game 4, or (perhaps) if Scioscia doesn't put the play on. Or not. Either way, Scioscia said, the Angels did compete with the Red Sox, which maybe wasn't the case before.
"You can at least be at peace with that," he said.
Meantime, everybody seems to believe the younger Angels have grown up and put that series behind them. And that these Angels are at least as prepared as those Angels, even if those Angels had Mark Teixeira(notes) (.467) batting third and Vladimir Guerrero(notes) (.467) having the rare productive playoff series. They drove in a single run between them, but that wasn't their fault.
Scioscia called it, "A whole new set of variables, a whole new set of matchups."
And now, he said, "The only way to do it is grind it out pitch by pitch and start to build some momentum."
Aybar will start at shortstop in Game 1 and thereafter. Kendrick will start at second base Thursday night against Jon Lester(notes), then likely sit against Josh Beckett(notes) in Game 2. Switch-hitter Maicer Izturis(notes) will get that start.
Standing in front of his locker, and beside Kendrick's, Torii Hunter(notes) raised his hand as though to push away any more talk about curses or jinxes or hexes.
"I don't want to talk about that," he said, then smiled. "I don't think it's because of Boston. I think it was because of the situation. Last year a couple guys got caught up in the hype of the playoffs. Now they're a year older. Now they can do some great things. Last year was last year."
That's how he would answer that. How they all would.
Jorge Posada(notes), never known as a diva exactly, will stew over the next 72 hours as he bides his time on the New York Yankees bench. Apparently, the $52.4 million contract the Yankees gifted him through his 40th birthday is not enough to hush a jilted catcher.
Since he took over the catching job earlier this decade, he hasn't been put in the position he will be heading into Game 2 on Friday: a backup. New York starter A.J. Burnett(notes) prefers throwing to Jose Molina(notes), manager Joe Girardi complied with the request and the way Posada played in the Yankees' opening-game victory against Minnesota, it's not too big a drop-off anyway.
Two CC Sabathia(notes) pitches skipped by Posada for passed balls in the 7-2 victory, and one cost the Yankees a run. The explanation was simple: the pitcher and catcher got crossed up. Still, a run's a run, and a run on a passed ball is troubling in October.
As is, frankly, the truth about Posada: For all his regular-season success, including an .885 OPS as a 38-year-old this season, he's been altogether awful in the playoffs. In more than 300 postseason at-bats, Posada has hit just .236 with a .379 slugging percentage. In only three of his 23 career series has he hit .300 or higher, and in just six has he slugged .500 or better.
Posada may be an accepted Yankee great because of the teams he played on. He isn't Derek Jeter(notes) or Bernie Williams(notes) or even Aaron Boone(notes) when it comes to big hits and postseason production. He is, right now, the guy who's making a story where one needn't be.
"It's making me out to be the bad guy," Burnett told reporters before Game 1.
Maybe so. Though right now, there's no question who looks worse.
Yahoo! Sports reporter Jeff Passan contributed to this story.
