Trading places

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- In the final days of July 2008, the baseball landscape was decisively altered. That was when Mark Teixeira went to Los Angeles. That was when Manny Ramirez left Boston. That was when the Angels and Red Sox all but swapped identities and philosophies.

So now here we are, on the eve of October, and let there be no doubt: The Los Angeles Angels are the team to beat in the American League. They won 100 games this season while finishing with a winning percentage of .585 or better against the AL East, Central, and West; during the second half of the season, the Angels hit more home runs and scored more runs (albeit in two more games) than the Red Sox did. Along the way, the delicate balance of power shifted from the east to the west.

"They're the best team we've faced," one Red Sox official said of the Angels.

Those words were uttered months ago, before the Angels added a slugger and the Red Sox lost one, a proverbial two-game swing that resulted in a familiar Hollywood script. From "Freaky Friday'' to ""Trading Places" to ""Like Father, Like Son,'' the storyline is generally the same. The principals swap bodies and/or identities, and each gets to experience life on the other side.

In this case, the principals might as well have switched uniforms.

As most every Red Sox follower is certain to point out in the next 24-36 hours, there are more than just five months difference between April and October; the games now are entirely different. The Angels had home field advantage against the Red Sox in 2004 only to be unceremoniously swept from the first round of the playoffs in three lopsided games. Last year, the series opened in Boston and the Angels similarly were blown off the field.

In such cases, history is a convenient crutch, though we all know the truth: Those games mean nothing now. The Los Angeles lineups encountered by the Sox in 2004 and 2007 were quite different from the one the Sox will encounter now, and not solely because of Teixeira's arrival. Torii Hunter has since joined these Angels, arriving as a free agent in the offseason. Garret Anderson is healthy this year (unlike last) and someone like Jose Guillen has not been suspended (as he was in 2004), which means that Red Sox pitchers are going to have a far more difficult time pitching to the Angels in 2008 than they did in either '04 or '07.

Please, don't rely on history as a factor in this series. Of all people, Boston fans should know better. If the Red Sox win Game 1 and doubts start creeping into the heads of Angels players, it has a great deal more to do with mental toughness (or lack thereof) than it does with anything that took place on the field last year or in '04.

Relative to '04 and '07, Red Sox pitchers are going to have their hands full in this series because the Angels can score in more ways now. Since joining the Angels, Teixeira has batted .358 with 13 home runs, 43 RBIs, 39 runs scored and 32 walks (against just 23 strikeouts) in 54 games; he has slugged .632 and has an OPS of 1.081. During that same period of time, Garret Anderson has been all but reborn, batting .335. (He went 8 for 10 in his first two games with Teixeira in the lineup.) Meanwhile, Vladimir Guerrero went from batting .284 and slugging .478 (before Teixeira) to hitting .345 and slugging .614 (after Teixeira).

But then, given where we live, we should hardly be surprised. By now, we should understand the impact a great hitter can have on a lineup.

In this case, as far as the Red Sox are concerned, the departure of Manny Ramirez now looms larger amid the uncertainty surrounding Mike Lowell and J.D. Drew, each of whom is injured. In last year's division series, as if flipping a switch, Ramirez morphed from a deteriorating Hall of Famer into a force again, going 3 for 8 with two homers (one a game-winner against Francisco Rodriguez that is now somewhere over Canada) and five walks; the ripple effect on the Boston lineup was tremendous. No less an authority than Theo Epstein admitted the Sox were a "different team" when Ramirez (in particular) and David Ortiz were firing on all cylinders, and that explosiveness is something the Sox no longer possess.

Said Cleveland manager Eric Wedge during the Indians' visit top Fenway Park last week: "For a while there, when you thought about Boston, you thought about those two guys in the middle, who were probably one of the great combinations of all-time."

If all of this is interpreted as some suggestion that the Sox erred in dealing away Ramirez, that is not the point; rather, it just means that the Red Sox are now facing an opponent with more firepower, something that would be true even if Drew and Lowell were fully healthy. Earlier this month, when the Sox were in Tampa, one player said he was convinced that the Red Sox would not have been preparing for the postseason had Ramirez remained with the club. As is the case with any trade, the Red Sox had to give something to get something.

The Red Sox need to beat the Angels differently now -- with pitching, defense and speed as much as with power. They need to avoid big mistakes against the middle of the Los Angeles lineup. They need to keep Angels' tablesetters off the bases. And they need to maximize their scoring opportunities because they don't have the kind of lineup that can be counted on to land the big blow.

The other guys are bigger, stronger, and scarier now.

More than anyone, the Red Sox should understand what they are up against.