It's sink or swim for Angels now

Light touch doesn't mask dire situation

MIKE SCIOSCIAOffense needed

ANAHEIM, Calif. - After suffering their 10th consecutive playoff loss to the Red Sox Wednesday night, the Angels understandably might have let tension creep into their clubhouse. But how could it when the Halos, the team that brought you the Rally Monkey, have nonroster guys like Justin Speier around for comic relief?

Fifteen minutes after they opened their clubhouse to the media at Angel Stadium yesterday, Speier, a 34-year-old righthander who was left off the playoff roster, came bounding into the room, looking deliriously confused, like the March Hare in "Alice in Wonderland," and shouting, "Am I late for practice? Am I late for practice?"

Speier looked more like a lost Aquaman. Soaking from head to toe, he wore a black wetsuit, swim goggles, black swim fins, and was carrying a boogie board, as though he had just come from the beach.

The sight of Speier caused his teammates to break up.

"You have to know Justin Speier; he probably did just come from the beach," said manager Mike Scioscia. "Knowing Justin, he had his rubber flippers on and his wetsuit, and I expressed [to him] the next pair of flippers he's going to wear are going to be cement flippers, so he knows what's happening."

As Scioscia made his way across the clubhouse for his appointment with the media, Speier came running up and asked, "Coach, am I late? Do we have practice today?" To which Scioscia chuckled and shooed away his wacky righthander with a wave.

"Our clubhouse is loose, but our guys have a blue-collar approach," Scioscia said the day after the Angels' 4-1 loss in Game 1 of their American League Division Series. "When they get on the field, they practice the game hard, and if you look at the way these guys go about their business, there is no questioning they will be ready to play and they are ready to play."

One indication of the Angels' ability to handle pressure is their 31-21 record in one-run games this season. When you factor in their 30-7 record in two-run games, those pressure victories represent more than half their total of 100, a franchise record and the most in baseball.

"I think it's really a byproduct of a couple of things," Scioscia said. "First is, I think for large stretches of the first half of our season, our offense was really just - just didn't show up. So we were pitching very well. And the other side of that was our starting pitching was terrific and our bullpen was as good as anybody's when you look at what Scot Shields and Francisco Rodriguez have done and the development of [Jose] Arredondo.

"Those guys, we got close games late in innings, they held leads and we won."

Simple as that, really. But it wasn't the case Wednesday when John Lackey made a 1-0 lead stand through five innings before one pitch - a fastball hung high in the strike zone - to Jason Bay got away from him in the sixth and wound up getting deposited into the left-field bleachers for a two-run homer.

So the Angels face a virtual must-win scenario in Game 2 tonight. They must salvage a home-field split or head to Fenway Park to face the possibility of getting swept by the Sox in the ALDS for the second year in a row.

"I think those close games are indicators of good teams and probably an indicator of how a team handles pressure and how it handles certain situations," said right fielder Gary Matthews Jr. "I've got to believe, if a team plays enough one-run games and you win enough of those, you adapt to those situations and you become maybe more comfortable than a team that hasn't played in that situation as much - regular season or playoffs, it doesn't matter.

"The more experience you have in certain game situations, you become more successful in them and you become accustomed to it."

Does it breed more confidence? "Absolutely, especially when you've had success in those situations," Matthews said. "It can definitely breed more confidence."

The Angels will likely need it if they are to end their playoff skid against the Red Sox.

"We have the confidence to get outs late in a game, but when your offense is getting one run, that puts a lot of pressure on your pitching staff," Scioscia said. "Those types of leads are going to be difficult against some higher offenses. So we need to have some things happen in close games.

"It's a little different when you're talking about a 1-0 close game than a 4-3 close game or a 3-2 close game. So we do need a little more margin of error for our pitchers, and it's going to have to come from the offensive side."

Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.