KMAX: Sports

BASEBALL PREVIEW '03: Angels stand pat after World Series victory

By KEN PETERS
AP Sports Writer

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) The Anaheim Angels decided not to monkey around.

This season's starting lineup? Same as a year ago. The rotation? Still intact.

Even that pesky Rally Monkey will be in place when Troy Glaus, Garret Anderson & Co. raise the World Series championship flag before they host Texas in the major league opener Sunday night.

``A lot of the names are the same, but when you look where guys are and what the experience of last year is going to do for them, I think we're hopefully be even stronger,'' AL Manager of the Year Mike Scioscia said.

``But you look at the experience of John Lackey, not having him for a full year, Francisco Rodriguez and what you would hope that he can bring to our club,'' he said.

The Angels hope they do a lot better than the last championship team that stood pat.

After winning the World Series in 1987, the Minnesota Twins didn't tinker with their lineup or rotation.

Despite having sluggers Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti and Tom Brunansky and pitchers Frank Viola and Bert Blyleven, the Twins missed the playoffs in 1988. Minnesota won 91 games six more than the previous year but was beaten out by Oakland's 104-win season.

Of course, there was no wild card then and there were only two divisions in each league, rather than the current three.

Coming off the first Series championship in the team's 42-year history, the Angels made only a couple of minor moves over the winter.

So Darin Erstad, Tim Salmon and Scott Spiezio again will be in the lineup, with Jarrod Washburn heading the rotation.

Lackey, who won Game 7 as a rookie, will be with the Angels the whole season. So will Rodriguez, a postseason sensation who was around only for only the closing days of the regular season.

Al Newman, who played for Minnesota from 1987-1991, said the Angels are similar to the Twins' 1987 World Series champions.

``The type of players are pretty much atypical as we had in '87, gritty guys who weren't pretty but just got the job done,'' said Newman, now Minnesota's third-base coach.

Winning more regular-season games but not returning to the postseason was ``kind of disheartening but yet we were still very competitive,'' he said.

``If there would have been a wild card we probably would have got it that year.''

The Angels, after a 6-14 start that was the worst in franchise history, ended up winning a club-record 99 games last year.

They finished four games back of division winner Oakland, but earned a wild-card berth and beat the New York Yankees and the Twins on the way to their World Series victory over San Francisco.

General manager Bill Stoneman saw no reason to make moves.

``We're so well-balanced, it would be pretty tough to improve on the balance,'' Stoneman said.

Scioscia, heading into his fourth year with the Angels, believes the team should be better.

``With David Eckstein becoming more and more confident at shortstop and establishing himself as one of the premier leadoff guys in our league, with Adam Kennedy breaking out, I think our players are certainly improving, using the experience we had last year,'' he said.

``So you might say there were no changes made, but I think we have the ability to be an even deeper club than we were last year. That goes to what we had hoped to accomplish when we came here, and that was to be perennial contenders, and I really feel this core can do that.''

Stoneman said that, like last year, the club's makeup could change some during the season.

``A year ago, some of the guys like Lackey, Brendan Donnelly, Scot Shields and Rodriguez, we didn't think of too much at the beginning of the season but they became major factors before it was over,'' the GM said. ``So you really don't know.''

Stoneman said the Angels were able to keep the team intact because the owner, Walt Disney Co., upped the team's budget by $20 million, to $83 million for this year. Although that's still a long way from the New York Yankees' $150 million payroll.

``With the quality of our season and postseason, fan interest really jumped,'' Stoneman said. ``Our projections for revenues for '03 will increase and therefore we were hoping for and got a player budget increase.''

Scioscia won't be surprised if the Angels repeat. Of course, he wasn't surprised last year.

``Not many people thought we were going to do much,'' he said. ``A lot of people said it was incredible, amazing, unbelievable that we won the World Series.

``I didn't see it that way. We were a good team that played well, was of championship caliber and proved it.''

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