In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.
The contrast between Tuesday night's starting pitchers could not have been more stark. CC Sabathia was efficient, mixed his pitches and threw nothing but strikes. Scott Kazmir, on the other side, never seemed to find any kind of rhythm and essentially played right into the strengths of the Yankee lineup.
New York's lineup is difficult enough to navigate without giving them any assistance, and assistance is exactly what Kazmir gave them. If you intend to have success against them, you must establish a secondary pitch in the early innings. Especially given the issues their lineup has had against the breaking ball in the early part of the ALCS, Kazmir's ability to locate his slider was going to be crucial to his outing.
Scott Kazmir's journey from Tampa Bay to Anaheim has been successful only because of stops in Alabama and New Jersey.
Kazmir, scheduled to start Tuesday against the Yankees in Game 4 of the ALCS, went from the Rays to the Angels in a late-August trade. And in six starts for the Angels, the lefty went 2-2 with a 1.73 ERA.
"When he became available," manager Mike Scioscia said, "he became really a good fit for what we thought that we needed. He really threw the ball well for us since we got him through the month of September. And hopefully he'll come up big in the playoffs, too."
There was a lot of talk about the amount of home runs hit over the right field fence in the new Yankee Stadium this season, and it seems that Angels manager Mike Scioscia has heard a great deal of it. He's shuffling his rotation from the order he used during the Division Series to get a lefty starter on the mound for Saturday's Game 2 of the ALCS.
Scioscia said Tuesday that the Angels would start either Scott Kazmir or Joe Saunders with Jered Weaver dropping back one game and starting the first game in Anaheim. The hope of neutralizing Yankees power heading toward the short porch is definitely the prime reason for the move, though there are other considerations that probably played into Scioscia's decision.
Tuesday, FanHouse had the opportunity to discuss the MLB Playoffs with Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, who currently serves as a studio analyst for TBS. TBS will be broadcasting all four Division Series and also the NLCS again this season. Ernie Johnson is the studio host while Dennis Eckersley and David Wells join Ripken as studio analysts for these playoff games.
Of all the things Ripken discussed Tuesday, the most intriguing subject, not surprisingly, was one Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod is an oft-maligned regular season superstar, in that he's put up extremely gaudy regular season numbers throughout his career, yet has never played in a World Series and has pretty sub-par numbers in the playoffs overall -- especially of late.
In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down each of the playoff teams from a scouting perspective.
There are a lot of reasons that the Angels lead baseball in team batting average. Beyond the general fact that they are just loaded with quality hitters, they are loaded with hitters that are as comfortable hitting off-speed pitchs as they are the fastball. To shut down these hitters, you need to attack with power stuff and aggression. They thrive on jumping on pitches early in the count and forcing pitchers to go to secondary offerings before they want to.
By not allowing the pitcher that first-pitch strike, the Angels are creating a great deal of discomfort and taking him out of his rhythm. If you run out a pitcher with merely average stuff, Los Angeles has the approach to handle changing speeds.
Terry Francona announced the Red Sox rotation for the series on Sunday as well. Jon Lester will take the ball in Game 1 to face Lackey, while Josh Beckett will start Game 2 followed by the young Clay Bucholz in Game 3. The question is, who will Boston's fourth starter be?
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action with a quick nod to what is ahead.
You Oughta Know ... That the final day of the regular season has arrived and there are still two meaningful baseball games to be played. There would have been three if the Dodgers hadn't snapped their five-game losing streak by beating the Rockies, clinching the National League West and relegating the Rockies to the wild card.
Meanwhile, the Tigers kept sliding and the Twins kept climbing. Minnesota's 5-4 victory over Kansas City and Detroit's 5-1 loss to the White Sox left the two teams dead even. The Tigers had been alone in first since July 24.
If it's not settled on Sunday -- the Tigers host the White Sox at 1:05 PM ET and the Twins host the Royals at 2:10 PM ET -- the teams will meet on Tuesday at 5 PM ET at the Metrodome to determine who goes on and who goes home.
But besides his fine season -- 89 runs scored, 96 RBI, .823 OPS -- Abreu seems to have passed on his patience at the plate to the rest of his Angels teammates.
"He's got the younger players understanding patience isn't a bad thing," Chone Figgins told FanHouse. "It's not about not being aggressive, but being patient, getting a pitch to hit. There's nothing wrong with being 1-1 and hitting, or 1-2, or 2-2.
"It's not something simple to do, but I think we did a good job of it in spring training and have tried to bring it into the season and have so far done a good job."
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action with a quick nod to what is ahead.
You Oughta Know ... That the Rangers could not have fallen out of the playoff race any more quietly than this. Not only have they been losing, but their bats have fallen silent. Including Friday night's 2-0 loss to the Angels, the Rangers have scored just one run in the past five games, a first in franchise history. The last team to score once in five games was the Braves in June 2007.
Scott Kazmir handed them a critical defeat on Friday. The Angels, who had been scuffling themselves on a trip to New York and Boston, came into Texas and pushed the Rangers a season-high 7 1/2 games back in the AL West. The Rangers trail Boston by seven games in the wild-card race.
From the Angels side, Kazmir seems to have turned around his season with the trade from the Rays to Angels. Kazmir had a 5.92 ERA with Tampa Bay, but he's got a 1.42 ERA in four starts with the Angels.
Poppin' out of the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.
By now we all know of the greatness of San Francisco pitcher Tim Lincecum. He's the best pitcher in baseball this season, with a 2.34 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and 233 strikeouts in 200 1/3 innings. But there's another hard-throwing young kid in the Giants organization that, like Lincecum, has a shot to be one of the league's best very quickly. He's a guy you want to burn that No. 1 waiver priority on, in case he sticks in the rotation for the rest of the season. He is Madison Bumgarner.
In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.
Scott Kazmir's journey from Tampa Bay to Anaheim has been successful only because of stops in Alabama and New Jersey.
There was a lot of talk about the amount of home runs hit over the right field fence in the new Yankee Stadium this season, and it seems that Angels manager 
Tuesday, FanHouse had the opportunity to discuss the 
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While we're not going to know who the 
Every Sunday, 
Starting Five
Poppin' out of the box scores and right into your cubicle, the 
