Angels stay on a roll in role reversal

ANAHEIM, Calif. – The Los Angeles Angels, not the Boston Red Sox, pitched themselves to the brink of the American League Championship Series on Friday night.

The Angels drew the walk. The Angels stole the base. The Angels got the big hit.

And then another.

The Red Sox, not the Angels, were short four or five pitches, and so stand on the brink of winter.

The Red Sox missed on the 3-and-1 fastball. The Red Sox couldn’t thwart the runner. The Red Sox left a pitch up.

And then another.

So they move the whole thing to Fenway Park, for brunch on Sunday, the Angels – and not the Red Sox – running downhill, feeling like this might work, in fact almost sure of it.

“Things cannot stay the same forever,” Vladimir Guerrero(notes) said, this pronouncement coming from the notorious free swinger who in the most critical inning of the Angels’ most critical game drew a five-pitch leadoff walk and did not even take the bat off his shoulder.

“Still,” he added, “there is no victory. We’ll see what happens.”

Three days into baseball’s postseason, the Angels became the third team to take a two-games-to-none series lead. Unlike the Yankees and Dodgers, however, the Angels still have some deep-seated issues to work through.

That said, these two days in Orange County felt to them like progress. By the end of their 4-1 win, they had limited the Red Sox to eight hits, 11 total bases, a .131 batting average and a single run. Jered Weaver(notes) followed the path cleared 24 hours earlier by John Lackey(notes), got the same 22 outs, threw 111 pitches to Lackey’s 115, allowed two hits to Lackey’s four, even tipped his cap on the same patch of green using the same sweeping exuberance.

When you spend the preceding week trying to explain why it is the Red Sox have beaten you and your haloed predecessors senseless for a long generation, well, you take these two end-to-end wins and turn them into organizational momentum. You turn them into fist pumps and laughter and a five-hour flight you might actually look forward to.

Asked why the Angels – and not the Red Sox – have won in every corner, from the pitches they threw to the pitches they hit to the bases they ran and the balls they ran down, Torii Hunter(notes) said, with a happy grin … well, he wasn’t really sure.

“That’s baseball,” he said. “I know we’re hungry. We want it. I’m not going to say more than the Red Sox, but we want it. We want it.”

In three division series this decade, it was the Red Sox who went out, two-oh, on the Angels. In ’04 it was Schilling and Pedro. In ’07 it was Beckett and Matsuzaka (and friends). In ’08 it was Lester and Matsuzaka (and friends, again).

And now the Angels over two nights have beaten Lester and Beckett, though neither would regret more than a pitch or two.

Lester lost, 5-0. Beckett pitched into the late innings tied 1-1 and lost 4-1. He walked Guerrero to start the seventh. And with pinch-runner Howie Kendrick(notes) itching to steal second, Beckett (and catcher Victor Martinez(notes)) was unable to stop him, but did get the next two outs. It’s when he tried to fool Maicer Izturis(notes) with the curveball that Izturis banged past second base and into center field, when he hit Mike Napoli(notes) with another curveball, when he threw a fastball down the middle to Erick Aybar(notes), who tripled over center field Jacoby Ellsbury’s(notes) head.

That was that. The lead was three runs. Weaver picked it up in the eighth, gave it off to Darren Oliver(notes), and to Kevin Jepsen(notes), then survived Brian Fuentes(notes). And Beckett had lost for only the third time in 13 postseason starts.

For what seemed like forever, Boston had beaten the Angels with just that game. By refusing to blink, or step back, or let the time of year get too big. Three times in the decade the Red Sox had taken out the Angels seemingly before the Angels had time to compose themselves. It was over before Mike Scioscia could get his guys turned around, before Guerrero could take a pitch, before they could get into their game.

And now, suddenly, it is the Red Sox who will cling to who they are at home, to the ferocious offense spawned by Fenway Park, to starters Clay Buchholz(notes) in Game 3 and, they really, really hope, Lester again in Game 4. It’s what they have.

Beckett turned late Friday night to face the cameras, disappointment in his eyes.

“We’ve just got to regroup,” he said. “We know what we have to do now. Can’t lose another one.”

He shook his head. The Angels had made all those pitches, had found a couple to hit themselves, had played the better, more taut baseball. The Angels had, and not the Red Sox.

“I make a couple of those pitches,” Beckett said, “and we’re not trying to fight this uphill battle.”

Crazy.