Nothing Like Bit of Talent to Aid Cause

By Diane Pucin

Sept. 30, 2001 12 AM PT

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

--Will Rogers

The manager of the Angels believes his baseball team is on the right track.

Mike Scioscia says that, in his opinion, the Angels have had one of the best farm systems in baseball for 20 years. “Maybe even 25,” Scioscia says. He says that the Angels have a good nucleus of young position players and an excellent core of three talented young pitchers.

Still, the Angels are in third place in the American League West, 35 games behind Seattle, 21 games behind Oakland and only four ahead of Texas. So Saturday night Darin Erstad, the Angels’ franchise player, the one man who can do for the Angels what Ichiro Suzuki has done for Seattle, was moved from center field to first base, where he will spend the rest of the season.

“If we’re going to be a club to be reckoned with next year,” Scioscia says, “we’ve got to attempt some different looks.”

“It’s not a question of whether I’m going to do damage, but how much damage I will do.”

--Mo Vaughn

Vaughn used to be the Angels’ first baseman. Until he ruptured something in his elbow and needed surgery and missed this entire season and kind of disappeared from the clubhouse and Edison Field and California. As an Angel, Vaughn has damaged his ankle (on his very first play in his very first game in Anaheim in 1999) and his elbow but not very many American League pitchers.

Scioscia says Erstad playing first base for the rest of this season does not mean Mo won’t be back. But it might mean Scioscia saw Vaughn on a TV sports talk show a month or so ago and noticed how largely round Mo had become during his rehab.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

--Walt Disney

Walt may have dreamed up Disneyland, but to build it, he needed more than vision--he needed money and good help and commitment and the belief that making his dream come true was the most important thing in the world.

Running a baseball team is kind of the same thing. You need a dream, you need money and good help and commitment and vision. The Angels are smack dab in the middle of the best division in baseball. For two years running now the AL West has produced two playoff teams.

A look at American League statistics is scary if you are interested in making the Angels contenders. Seattle leads the league in batting average (.286) and Texas is third (.278). While the A’s are 10th (.263) and only a percentage point ahead of the 11th-place Angels (.262), Oakland has scored 180 more runs than Anaheim and is fourth best in the league (Seattle is first, Texas is second).

Pleasantly surprising is the way the Angel pitching staff has recorded the fifth-best ERA in the league. Of course, that makes them only third best in the division since Seattle and Oakland are first and second.

Ranger owner Tom Hicks, after spending a gasp-producing and record-breaking $252 million for shortstop Alex Rodriguez, says he will spend willingly and liberally on acquiring the starting pitching that would make Rodriguez’s 50 home runs and .323 batting average and 131 runs batted in really meaningful.

The A’s have very little fan base and are a bad second in a two-team Bay Area where it seems more people are watching San Francisco games on their boats in the bay than in seats at Network Associates Coliseum.

The A’s stadium is awful. Yet the A’s grew a strong, young pitching staff and opportunity-grabbing hitting team.

And the Mariners are in the middle, willing to spend but not crazily, able to replace the big stars with lots of medium stars. The Mariners decided that committing long term to superstars wasn’t the way to go so they sent away Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Rodriguez. But they weren’t misers either. The Mariners paid the Orix Blue Wave, Ichiro’s Japanese team, more than $13 million for his rights, then gave Ichiro an additional $16 million.

“The AL West is the envy of major league baseball with the young pitchers it has,” Scioscia says. But even if you have the third-best group of young pitchers in the league, if that’s still third best in your division, that means no playoffs.

“We must either find a way or make one.”

--Hannibal

There are different ways to become a winning team in baseball. The teams in the AL West are using them all. We can be pretty sure Disney won’t be using the Tom Hicks big-spender method.

But can the Angels out-Oakland Oakland? Can the Angels find their Ichiro? Disney had a plan when it spent $70 million to remake Edison Field into the fabulous ballpark it is.

The plan was for Edison to be nice so that Anaheim stayed nice so that Disneyland could grow and attract more customers.

Whether a nice ballpark means more customers at Disneyland is debatable.

Whether Disney has a plan for making the Angels into a playoff team is debatable.

Whether a good team inside that nice ballpark means more fans isn’t debatable.

“In the end it all comes down to talent. You can talk all you want about intangibles, I just don’t know what that means. Talent makes winners, not intangibles. Can nice guys win? Sure, nice guys can win--if they’re nice guys with a lot of talent. Nice guys with a little talent finish fourth, and nice guys with no talent finish last.”

--Sandy Koufax

Not much more to say. The Angels will need more talent to be better next year. It’s great to have good young pitching but if that’s only third best in your division, so long playoffs.

It’s wonderful to have a solid, respectable farm system, but if that system--let’s speculate--could be the third best in the league but also only third best in the division, so long playoffs.

It would be nice if the Angels have a plan.

It would be nicer if it’s the best plan ever, because that’s life in the AL West.

Diane Pucin can be reached at [email protected]