Comparing the 2014 Angels with the 2002 Angels

We Angels fans have a problem. Anytime the Halos have a good team we are compelled to compare that team to the World Series winning 2002 Angels. We can’t help it.

That team was the greatest team the franchise has ever seen. If we are being honest, it is the only great team in the franchise’s otherwise nondescript history. It is also something that happened recently enough that most of us were actually alive to witness that team first hand and build fond, vivid memories about them. It is our only frame of reference for what a great Angels team looks like, so we force the comparison whenever we think there might be another great team blossoming before our eyes.

This is a really bad habit and we should stop. That being said, the 2014 Angels are TOTALLY like the 2002 Angels.

Mind you, I’m not doing this blindly. I realize there are some very stark differences. The 2002 Angels were a Wild Card team whereas the 2014 Angels have the best record in baseball. The 2002 Angels didn’t have anything resembling Mike Trout, mainly because there has been nobody like Mike Trout in the history of ever.

On a micro-level, however, there are a lot of similarities. The rotation, for starters (pun intended), is eerily similar.

In Jered Weaver, the Halos have a former ace with a mid-eighties fastball who is clearly on the downside of his career (stop it, don’t even start, this isn’t up for debate). He’s basically a skinnier, long-haired version of Kevin Appier. Like Appier, his days of dominance are behind him, but he’s still got enough in the tank to fake it for a month.

Behind Weaver is Matt Shoemaker, the rookie who joined the rotation mid-season and turned out to better than they ever could have hoped, not unlike John Lackey, though he lacks Lackey’s prospect pedigree. Still, I think we’d all feel more than confident in Shoe if he were to get the start in a championship deciding Game 7.

That 2002 Angels team also had veteran Aaron Sele, a guy that they were banking heavily on only to have him turn into a complete disaster down the stretch to the point that he was barely used in the playoffs. Sadly, that reminds me quite a bit of C.J. Wilson. Even more sadly, the Angels don’t have the option to not use him in the postseason.

Rounding out the playoff rotation is Hector Santiago, a young-ish starter who has flashed signs of dominance but also shown signs of being a total mess. Nobody trusts him, but we all realize the Angels are stuck with him for better or worse. If he isn’t Ramon Ortiz, minus the lying-about-his-age saga, I don’t know who is.

If you really want to stretch the comparison, Garrett Richards could be cast as Jarrod Washburn, the young starter that hadn’t really clicked his first few tours through the majors only to have a career year and become a surprise leader of the pitching staff. Washburn never had his knee blow up though, so the comparison only extends so far.

The most memorable part of that 2002 roster wasn’t the rotation though, but rather the bullpen. It was dominant and deep, just like the current Angel bullpen. In fact, I think I’d take Street-Smith-Jepsen-Grilli-Morin-Salas over the vaunted collection of Percival-Rodriguez-Donnelly-Weber-Levine-Shields. This group lacks the flash and flare of Percy, K-Rod and Ben Weber‘s sideburns, but it is probably better. The one quirk they certainly both share though is their ability to succeed all season long despite seldom ever having a decent lefty in the ‘pen.

Where the similarities start to fall apart a bit is in the lineup. There is no Eckstein on the current roster. There is no Garret Anderson (unless you want to racially profile Howie Kendrick, which you shouldn’t). There is no Adam Kennedy.

What the 2014 Angels do have is a Darin Erstad, the fiery, gritty table-setter only the 2014 version is the human fire hydrant named Kole Calhoun. They also have a Bible-thumping, veteran, slugger in the middle of the order in Albert Pujols who is basically an incredibly expensive version of Tim Salmon. Finally, for whatever it is worth, both teams have former drug addicts in Josh Hamilton and Scott Spiezio (OK, I’m being a little liberal with the use of “former” in relation to Spiezio), respectively.

I think what really cinches the comparison for me actually has nothing to do with the roster. As someone living on the East Coast in 2002, I can tell you that the number on thing other fans identified that Angels team with wasn’t any one player, it was that damn Rally Monkey and those blasted Thundersticks.

This year, the Rally Monkey is still around but has gained acceptance and the Thundersticks have been renamed Fish Sticks and relegated mostly to the left field stands. In their stead as the super annoying gimmicks du jour is the freaking Light Wave. Oh how everyone (including some Angels fans) is going to come to loathe the Light Wave. It is going to be the recipient of such bile that the Rally Monkey outrage will pale by comparison.

It isn’t a perfect comparison, sure, but it is probably the closest the Angels have gotten in the last 12 years. It is certainly close enough for cognitive dissonance to kick in and convince us that the 2014 Angels are destined to achieve the same greatness of the 2002 squad. And that’s really the whole point of this exercise, isn’t it?