Well, that was abrupt...

And just like that, the Sox are in the Championship Series. I'll resist the temptation to write five paragraphs of "See, OPS is better than BA, and a much better stat around which to build an offense." Of course, it helped that Beckett was unconscious in Game 1, and that Schill continued to pad his "big-game pitcher" resume on Sunday in finishing the sweep. Still, I think the quote I heard that summed up the difference between the two teams best came after Manny's walk-off in Game 2, when an analyst pointed out that the Angels didn't have anyone (other than Guerrero) who can win the game with one swing, while the Sox have about five. That about covers it.

The Sox, top to bottom, are guys who will extend at-bats, force pitchers into long counts, and wait for a ball to hammer. It's very tough to take them out of a game. Any pitcher with decent command, though, can force the Angels to swing at a lot of bad pitches and either strike them out or get easy fly balls. The only time they showed any life at all in this series was against Dice-K, and mostly because he was nibbling, trying to pitch around them rather than attacking.

Which brings me to an interesting thought. Old-school baseball writers, the sort who sit about complaining about how all these newfangled stats are ruining the game, love nothing so much as a team that "manufactures runs." Generally what they mean by this is any team that lays down a lot of bunts, steals a lot of bases, and puts on a hit-and-run every other inning or so. In other words, a team that can't hit for shit, and thus has to gamble on the basepaths in order to score.
It strikes me, though, that "manufacturing runs" is completely the wrong term for this. Manufacturing is the process of sticking to a proven, deliberate method in order to create a product. So wouldn't the approach favored by the Sox (take lots of pitches in order to either drive a good one over the fence or get on base so the next guy can knock you in) fit that label much better than trading outs for bases? Perhaps that's too logical for baseball.

The way somebody (I think it was Rob Neyer, but I really can't recall) put it once is that outs should be thought of the same way that we think of the clock in football or basketball. You'd never think it was a good idea for Tom Brady to spend two minutes on a single pass, because even if he gets a first down on that pass, the loss in time takes away opportunities for future first downs. Same deal in baseball.
Man on first, nobody out. If the batter bunts, the man on first will be on second, and thus can score on any base hit (unless he's Mo Vaughn in the later years). Better, right? No. Because while a man on second is more useful than a man on first, you know what's much more useful? Having two men on.
The league's OBP this year was .336. Thus, if an average major-league hitter is at the plate, he's got about a 1 in 3 chance of getting at least to first. If he bunts, his chances go down to just about zero, since the only way he'll reach base is if the fielder misplays the ball (or if the throw goes to second to force the lead runner, in which case the bunt was even more counterproductive). This is of course a massive oversimplification, since it ignores the possibility of double plays, or the slight increase in run expectancy with a man on second as opposed to first. But the basic point is there. In the bunt scenario, your chance of having blown one of your three alloted outs is almost 100%. If you let the guy swing, your chance goes down to about 67%. Not only that, but in the 33% of outcomes where the batter gets on, there's the possibility of a double, triple, or home run, any of which could score the runner from first without sacrificing the out.
This doesn't mean that a sac bunt is automatically a bad idea, just that its use should be really limited. As an example of reasonable use: if you look at the stats on sacrifice hits, you'll notice that the average NL team has almost twice as many sac hits as the average AL team. NL teams, of course, make pitchers hit, and since every pitcher in the league is pretty much a guaranteed out (pitchers OBPed to the tune of .177 this year), it's much more defensible to go for the bunt.

This went on a lot longer than I'd planned for it to, so I'll leave it at that. Tomorrow I'll likely write a bit on whether I'd rather see Cleveland or New York arrive in Boston on Friday.