New Schedule Is Paying Off This Season

On the last Saturday of August, with a September shootout looming in the American League West (and elsewhere), Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane suggested that Bud Selig should have already clinched the MVP -- Most Valuable Proponent of meaningful change.

“After all,” Beane said, “the commissioner is having a heck of a year.”

Who can argue?

Didn’t owners recently extend his contract for three years and isn’t the industry headed for record attendance amid improved TV ratings and increased parity that finds almost half of the 30 teams still harboring realistic or fanciful playoff hopes?

Hasn’t the introduction of the wild card and reintroduction of an unbalanced schedule emphasizing intra-division matchups set the stage for a scorching September epitomized by the race in the AL West, where none of the contenders -- the A’s, Angels and Texas Rangers -- show any signs of wilting and where their division and wild-card hopes are intertwined with those of the Boston Red Sox in the East?

“This is what baseball was hoping for when they created the unbalanced schedule,” Beane said. “This is what everyone wanted and what we should get.

“No one wants to be scoreboard-watching in September. Everyone wants to be playing the teams they’re in competition with for the playoffs.”

Unable to shake each other (or the Rangers), the A’s and Angels have continued to treat the dog days with disdain.

The A’s are 18-8 this month and 29-14 since the All-Star break, maintaining a trend that has seen them play at a .670 pace over the second half of the last five seasons.

The Angels are 18-7 this month and 28-14 since the All-Star break, their nine-game winning streak having ended Saturday when Bartolo Colon failed to match the dominance of emerging ace Johan Santana in a 7-1 loss to the Minnesota Twins.

A subdued crowd of 42,778 witnessed the humble end to a streak in which the Angels had averaged 8.6 runs and 13.6 hits a game and which had even inspired their one-game-at-a-time manager to look ahead a bit in the process of also looking back to 2002.

That, of course, was the year in which a 20-game Oakland win streak down the stretch failed to dissuade the Angels, who held on for the wild card before ultimately winning the World Series in accompaniment to the beat of those plastic noise sticks.

One could almost hear the distant echo as Mike Scioscia sat in the clubhouse Saturday morning and said that the 2004 team has more “individual skill talent” than 2002 and what that is translating to at this pivotal point of a previously inconsistent and injury-riddled season “is a better team than it’s been and potentially better than 2002.”

“If you’re talking about eight cylinders,” Scioscia said, “there were times this season when we were operating on only three, four and sometimes five.

“The last couple weeks, a lot of championship components have fallen into place. I’d say that we’re at a solid seven cylinders now.”

If so, the left-handed Santana wasn’t fazed. He gave up only four hits in seven innings, improving to 15-6 and enabling the Twins to maintain their sizable lead in the Central.

The Angels dropped two games behind Oakland in the West as they prepared to play a similar schedule over the final 32 games.

As of Monday, the Angels and A’s will both have 12 games left with Boston, Chicago, Toronto and Cleveland, and 20 games against Seattle, Texas and each other.

“No excuses,” Scioscia said. “If you don’t make it going head to head, there’s nobody to blame but yourself.”

The Angels, however, know what they’re up against. While the Red Sox and Rangers compound the playoff equation, the most formidable shadow is that of the A’s.

They have won three division titles while reaching the playoffs four years in a row. The 2004 team leads the league in pitching and fielding, and the current rotation of five established starters is deeper than any of its trademark predecessors. The A’s also are averaging more than five runs a game, have established a stronger measure of confidence by avoiding the streaky tendencies of the previous playoff clubs, Beane said, and “is the best balanced and most resilient club we’ve had.”

The Angels, who are expected to get back Troy Glaus and Jarrod Washburn soon, might have started their expected lineup only once because of injuries, but the A’s lost second baseman Mark Ellis for the season in spring training, played six weeks without third baseman Eric Chavez and starter Tim Hudson, and played a month without reliever Arthur Rhodes.

In addition, while Angel owner Arte Moreno was investing $146 million in four free agents during the winter, the small-market A’s were coping with their usual defections, including closer Keith Foulke and prized shortstop Miguel Tejada.

Nevertheless, Beane said, the flip side of what the A’s have accomplished in the past and what they’ve accomplished through five months of the 2004 season is that, “I’m not sure we’ve come up to September having to beat a club as good as the Angels are this year and also had to go against a second club like Texas. That extra dynamic is what makes it unique and even more volatile.”

It should be fun, and we already know who the MVP is.