I WAS impressed with the defense of the Red Sox, which team historically — at least in the past 25 years I’ve been watching them — was anywhere from pretty awful to just mediocre on defense.

As for a clean sweep, Scot Shields was filthy in both games, and the Red Sox didn’t do much to slow down his pace. But they had a slight advantage over the previous night seeing his pitches for the second night in a row.

“We lost to a team that’s not better than us,” growled pitcher John Lackey, who gave up two runs and seven hits in seven innings. “We are a better team than they are. The last two days, we shouldn’t have given up anything.”

“I’m [ticked], I’m upset, this one’s going to be with me for a while,” Hunter said. “It doesn’t feel good, because we’re a better team than they are. But they’re moving on.”

Red Sox run differential: +151, far and away the best in the AL and second only to the Cubs +184. The Angels had a differential of +68, only sixth-best in the AL and barely better than the +62 Yankees as well as far behind the +104 Blue Jays, two teams with worse records. The ExWL of the Sox was 97-65, while the Angels was 89-73… and that while playing in a weaker division, with fewer injuries with which to contend.

The Angels were many things, but “best team in the AL” was not one of them. I’m mostly surprised that Pedroia, Ortiz, Youkilis, and Bay couldn’t get that one hit in extra innings of Game 3 that would have resulted in a clean sweep.

I can’t recall where I read it recently, but someone had an excellent blog post about people who mistakenly see a weakness as a core element of their strength- the slappy singles hitter who thinks he’s successful because of a big swing and turns himself into an unemployed former infielder. The Angels embracing of “small ball” nonsense culminated in the most bizarre suicide squeeze failure I think I’ve ever seen, which effectively ended their season.

Tonight on Monster Chiller Mystery Theater…Jon Lester and Jed Lowrie star in that gripping sequel of the suspense classic: Die Anaheim Die II!

Frankly, I’m hoping for a 7 game ALCS. Rays vs Red Sox is fundamentally made of awesome.

Ugh.

It’s the Son of Eckstein.

boy, the batters are sissies because they use those wimpy light bats, & not the manly bats of yesteryear and the Angels got fat on the piss-poor AL West. so, anything else you want to diss, Ron? Buck? Chip?

makes a change from last night.