No Joy In Mudville...Again. I Hate Boston.

This is exactly why I hate the Boston sports scene. Not only because they're dominating my LA teams, but when Drew hit that home run tonight, did you catch how loud the cheering was? Did you hear the chants of "Let's go Red Sox!" because I was watching the game on tv and I could hear every one of them. I hate Boston. I hate all things Boston. I hate the Patriots. I hate the Celtics. And I hate the Red Sox above them all.

So here's my solution to fixing the Angels next season, because this one is just about done (people...let's be real. We're going to Boston to face the best big game picture currently in baseball. Beckett is unbelievable in the postseason, and they mentioned that they were ecstatic with his bullpen session yesterday, so don't pretend like his injury is going to affect him). We need to get rid of Mickey Hatcher. Buster Olney had a great piece in his blog on ESPN that talked a lot about it, but I've long had this hunch about him.

Okay, so I know there is a lot about loyalty, but our offense has been garbage in the postseason for four postseason years since the 2002 World Series year. The guys hack way too much, and we're not knocking out opposing teams' starting pitchers early enough to get a chance to work on the middle relief. It's what Boston has done to us for 11 games in a row or whatever ridiculous win streak they have against us currently in the postseason. Only tonight did they have any kind of patience, and you'll notice that when we started working the count, we started getting runs.

The only reason we keep Mickey around is because of that 2002 season, but it just so happened that all of our guys got hot at the same time. Olney talks about this masterfully in his blog post, but relying on batting average to carry you is highly variable and not something you can count on. We need runners on base, and that's the only thing that can have any kind of consistency, but our hitters are so impatient that we often get the other teams out of jams by striking out and giving up outs.

And please...young guys...do something. ANYTHING. Figgins started to come alive tonight, but Aybar, Napoli, Kendrick...we need you to wake up. The hits that Guerrero and Texeira are getting don't matter because no one is getting on in front of them. And without people on base when those guys come up, they're not getting the same quality of pitches that they would be otherwise.

And can we lose Anderson? He just isn't working anymore. I'm sorry. I know he gave us lots of good years, and he might be the first player for the Angels to go into the Hall of Fame as an Angel, but he's draggin'.

Oi. Go Dodgers? Or can basketball season please hurry and start, because I don't even want to talk about the Raiders.

What a mess...