Do the Angels still play National League-style ball?

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It’s the kind of cliche you hear all the time, and like the best cliches, it contains a significant element of truth: Mike Scioscia does indeed emphasize what were traditionally considered National League-style offensive values, including aggressive baserunning, productive outs, low strikeout totals, and avoiding the double play. But reputations change long after facts do, and the fact is that Scioscia’s offense has been morphing away from the Joe-Slugger-and-the-seven-dwarfs model of Whitey Herzog and at least somewhat in the direction of the power-from-seven-positions approach of Earl Weaver.

At the same time, they’re grounding into way more double plays. The 2002 world championship team, despite leading the league in batting average and hits, grounded into the fewest double plays in the league, just 105. Until last year, no Scioscia team had finished higher than 9th in GIDP, but then in 2007 the Angels grounded into 146 double plays and this year nearly matched it with 140, in nearly 100 fewer opportunities. The 2001-02 Angels, with a runner on first base, grounded into double plays about once every 16 times at bat (Note: This includes with two outs; I can’t find a less-than-two-outs split). The 2007-08 version hit a GIDP once every 12.

Oh, but maybe that’s just because the Angels never strike out, right? Not anymore! The 2008 squad struck out 987 times, which isn’t that much in the modern game, but it’s more than any Scioscia-ballers since 2001.

Is there an upside, compensating for these deteriorating baserunning/GIDP/strikeout figures? Why yes there is! The team hit home runs at a higher rate -- once every 34.8 at bats -- than any Scioscia squad since the offensive spike year of 2000 (in 2007 it was once every 45.2 ABs, for example). That’s an even more impressive jump than it looks at first glance, considering home runs are down nearly 13 percent league-wide since 2004. Not only did Scioscia get seven more homers from his catcher slot this year than any other American League team, he got more home runs out of his shortstops than any Scioscia team in history (sure, it was only 10, but you gotta start somewhere, and Brandon Wood figures to hit a lot more than 10 per year when he cracks the lineup, even though that may be at third base, where Angels hitters slugged a horrendous .306 this year). Angel center fielders (mostly free agent acquisition Torii Hunter) racked up 65 extra-base hits, fourth-best in the league and the most of any Angel team since 2000. Designated hitter, which has been a frequent Scioscia black hole (avert thy eyes from 2001, 2005 and 2007) produced a respectable 24 homers and 89 RBIs. And the biggest upgrade came at midseason, when a slugger with a possible Hall of Fame trajectory replaced the gap-powered Casey Kotchman, giving the Angels more than 21 HRs and 90 RBIs from that power position for the first time in eight seasons.

No matter how many times Chip Caray tries to tell you any differently tonight, the Angels team in this year’s playoffs is just a whole different beast than versions past when it comes to hitting the long ball. If Scioscia employs a National League-style offense, then so does Red Sox manager Terry Francona, whose team, despite playing half its games in Fenway Park, executed just four fewer sacrifice bunts, nine fewer successful steal attempts, and 13 fewer times caught stealing. The Angels are definitely becoming a more power-hitting team, but has the change been too late and too little?

This is the fourth consecutive year Angels stolen base totals have gone down, from a high of 161 in 2004 to 148 to 139 to 129. The team led not just the American League but all of baseball in SBs in 2004, 2005 and 2006; this year they finished just fifth. Their success rate too has gone down, from a high of 76 percent in 2004 (good for second place in the AL) to a more pedestrian 72 or 73 the past three years.

-- Matt Welch

Welch is editor of Reason magazine.