With '09 in books, Halos look to future

In times of hardship, Angels overcame it, now think to 2010

Mike Bauman

NEW YORK -- The 2009 season ended with a bitter defeat for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. But this season, taken as a whole, represents a victory for this club.

No other team in Major League Baseball had to go through what the Angels went through this year. A wave of pitching injuries early would have been enough in the category of adverse circumstances. But the tragic death of pitcher Nick Adenhart in an auto accident tested this team on a basic, human level. The Angels did not fail this test.

It was difficult to grasp the long-term perspective on Sunday night after Game 6 of the American League Championship Series. The Angels lost to the Yankees, 5-2. It was another game in which the Halos did not play the kind of fundamentally sound baseball that has characterized their work for many years.

After a regular season in which the Angels compiled the second-best record in baseball and won their fifth AL West title in six years, they encored with a sweep of the Boston Red Sox in the AL Division Series. At that point, it appeared that the Angels were well over the playoff hump, because the Sox had knocked them out of the postseason in three previous ALDS.

But in the ALCS, they played with an atypical lack of precision in each of the games in New York. They won two out of three in Anaheim and were impressive enough in doing so. Still, their overall performance was not enough to overcome the team with baseball's best talent. So Sunday night was tough for the Angels, even though everybody involved knew that this team had considerable achievements.

"Right now, it's tough to get a silver lining when you're knocked out," manager Mike Scioscia said. "It was a series that we had high expectations for, and we didn't get it done. But I think as we reflect on this, after a couple of days, just look at all the great things that happened on the field for us, the trials and tribulations that the guys in that clubhouse went through all year is something that you hope you never have to go through in your lifetime again.