Two-game hole doesn't mean Angels are too far gone

NEW YORK -- It's easy to dismiss the Angels now, easy to see them as just a slightly better version of the Twins, easy to see this American League Championship Series as a repeat of the first round of the playoffs.

Same ho-hum Yankee win in Game 1. Same game-saving Alex Rodriguez home run in Game 2, followed by a walk-off extra-inning win.

'We go home, it's going to be a different scene -- definitely,' Torii Hunter says. (Getty Images)

But as the Angels packed their bags after Saturday night's 4-3, 13-inning loss, there was a defiant streak that we never saw from the Twins, a confidence that befits a 97-win team just days removed from eliminating the Red Sox.

"You'd better believe we'll be back here [for Game 6]," manager Mike Scioscia said as he walked out of his Yankee Stadium office. "I'm leaving my briefcase here."

For the record, Scioscia took the briefcase, but he had made his point.

So did Torii Hunter, who saw no need for the type of "show some nuts" speech he gave last month in Boston. The Angels are disappointed to be down two games to none, deflated even after a game they led before A-Rod's clutch home run in the 11th, but not devastated or depressed.

And not defeated -- not yet.

"Hey, lot of baseball left, that's all I can say," Hunter said. "Lot of baseball left, and we're going to play a little better. I got this feeling, man, that we're going to have better games, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

"We go home, it's going to be a different scene -- definitely."

The scenes we'll all remember from two games in New York aren't good ones for the Angels, from the first inning of Game 1 -- when Chone Figgins and Erick Aybar both backed away from a Hideki Matsui pop-up -- to the final play of Game 2 -- when second baseman Maicer Izturis threw wildly past Aybar to allow the winning run to score.

Since Game 2 ended after 1 a.m. on the East Coast, many people will see only the highlights of this one. Over and over, they'll see Izturis needlessly trying to make a great play at second base, when the right play would have been to take the easy out at first, then let pitcher Ervin Santana attack Jorge Posada with two out and runners at the corners.

Scioscia, Hunter and other Angels would argue that they actually played a good game Saturday, and there's no doubt this one was a lot better than Game 1. The Angel problems Saturday were more normal baseball problems, like going 3 for 15 with runners in scoring position, or badly missing a spot with an 0-2 fastball, as closer Brian Fuentes did when he allowed the A-Rod home run in the 11th.

Scioscia said last weekend that he couldn't sleep for a month after playoff losses to the Red Sox in 2004 and 2007, because his team played nothing like it played during the regular season. He said Saturday night that this series isn't like those.

"This game was much better, a much higher level than we brought to the field last year in the playoffs, or in the years we got swept by Boston," he said. "We played at a much higher level."

To be sure, they matched the Yankees for most of the night Saturday, overcoming an early deficit with two runs in the fifth, then taking a lead in the 11th on Figgins' first hit of the postseason. Starter Joe Saunders gave them seven strong innings, and besides the one pitch by Fuentes, the bullpen was good, too.

It's possible that these Yankees are just that good, especially playing in their new but already very comfortable home. It's possible that they're going to head to California and sweep through the rest of this series, and then do the same to whichever team emerges from the National League.

But it's just as easy to think that these Angels aren't done yet, that a team that overcame as much as they did this season can overcome two difficult road losses to begin a best-of-7 series.

"We've got a six-hour plane ride to regroup, and another 24 hours after that," Fuentes said.

Fuentes led the majors in saves this year, but he was also shaky enough that by September Scioscia was handing some of the ninth-inning responsibilities to rookie Kevin Jepsen. The difference between Fuentes and Mariano Rivera is the biggest gulf between the two teams in this series, and if the Angels lose to the Yankees because Fuentes isn't nearly as good as Rivera, that's no sign that the Angels of October are any different from the Angels of April through September.

If the mistakes keep coming in the middle of the infield, like the Izturis error that ended Saturday's game, the questions would be different. The Angels were not an error-prone team (their 85 errors were one fewer than the Yankees, and just nine more than the two cleanest-fielding teams in the league), and mistakes now would be seen as a sign that they couldn't handle the bigger stage.

What made Izturis' mistake so bad, besides the timing, was that it was so unnecessary.

"I was just trying to be aggressive," Izturis told Efrain Ruiz of Venezuela's El Universal newspaper. "That's the way I am. I'm aggressive. I'm not afraid to be aggressive. I'm aggressive, but sadly, it cost us the game.

"That's the way baseball is."

The way baseball has been this year in the Bronx, we've become accustomed to these Yankee walk-off wins. The way baseball was the last two nights, we became accustomed to Angels not getting the job done.

If it wasn't Aybar and Izturis making defensive mistakes, it was Vladimir Guerrero leaving runners on base (eight of them Saturday night, 10 for the two games in New York). Or Hunter, grounding into a double play when the Angels could have extended their lead after Figgins' single in the 11th.

Or Bobby Abreu, who did so well all year and also against the Red Sox, going 0 for 9 with four strikeouts in the first two games against the Yankees.

"We didn't hit with runners in scoring position, that was our problem," Abreu said. "Monday, it's going to be different."

You'd like to believe him, like to believe Scioscia and Hunter too, like to think that Games 3 and 4 and beyond will be different, because you'd like to believe that this ALCS can still be as good and competitive as so many of us expected before it began.

Even after the way it ended, Saturday's game left the Angels believing it will be different. They believe, and maybe we should, too.

And maybe we would, especially if Scioscia really had left that briefcase.