Angels won't walk away with a victory
This could be the rare matchup that drives the purists and and the stat-heads nuts. Live from Anaheim: The team most likely to swing at a bad pitch, against the pitcher most likely to throw one.
The Angels are the team. Daisuke Matsuzaka is the pitcher. Patience will be a virtue at Angel Stadium tonight, but only in the visiting dugout.
If Matsuzaka had to pitch against his teammates, he would wilt in the third or fourth inning. The Boston Red Sox would take a ball, take a strike, take a ball, take a strike, take him out early.
He will excuse himself in the middle innings, if you let him. He led the American League in walks. No major league starter has ever won at least 18 games and pitched as few innings as he did this season -- 168, or fewer than six innings per start.
And the walk is the best bet to beat him, a better bet than a hit parade. He also led the league by holding opponents to a .211 batting average, including .164 with runners in scoring position and .000 (0 for 14) with the bases loaded.
Yet the Angels plan to play to their strength, not prey on the weakness of the opponent. Mickey Hatcher, the Angels' batting coach, said he will not hold a hitters' meeting this afternoon to emphasize the take sign.
"You want them to step in the box and be able to do something," Hatcher said. "You don't want them to step in the box and say, 'We're going to take a pitch, and then we're going to swing.' "
We can hear the screams already. If a Little League hitter can take until the pitcher throws a strike, why can't a major league hitter do the same thing?
He can, of course. This is Hatcher's point: He does not want hitters so programmed to take a pitch that they lose their aggressiveness, that they hesitate to swing at a pitch in their favorite hitting zone. Don't swing at every strike, he says, but don't take a fat first pitch for the sake of running up the other guy's pitch count.
If you let a pitcher get ahead in the count, he argues, you're letting him dictate the rest of the at-bat by pitching to the corners of the strike zone.
"What good does it do you to take the first pitch," he said, "if that's the only one you can hit?"
Yes, we can hear this objection too: Why don't the Angels try this approach -- force the other guy to throw strikes -- before condemning it?
They did, Hatcher said, and it was not a rousing success.
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