I'll admit that I am a tad bit biased on this examination, because I hate Chip Caray as an announcer. From the unoriginal "Steve Stone has never picked up a dinner check" every freaking game for his years with the Cubs to the way he laughs when he finishes non-funny sentences ... I just think he's a brutal baseball announcer. If his name wasn't Caray (or Albert or Brennaman) he'd be working minor league games on the radio.

Usually when fans say the announcers seemed like they were rooting against a team, it's lame. Yet last night it really felt like Chip was pulling for the Angels, and I'm unbiased. The cherry on top was when the Angels tied the game on a two RBI single off the bat of Torii Hunter.

You see, the Bostonians had been doing the old, slow, "TORRRRRRR - EEEEEEEEE" chant during the at-bat.

The instant Vladimir Guerrero crossed home plate, Chip exclaimed -- in jubilation -- "And no one's chanting now!"

It came off like smack-talk. I could understand if he was a home announcer -- like doing play by play for the Angels radio station -- but he's supposed to be a national announcer, thus without bias.

Sure sounded biased to me.

If there's one commandment that all major league managers should follow I think it's probably this: put your players in position to win baseball games and then let them win it. The worst managers are the ones that try to insert their own strategic visions on teams where simple performance from the players would suffice. Mike Scioscia, a man who is generally lauded as a "great" manager in the press for "doing things right," failed to follow this credo in Game 4 of the ALDS agains the Red Sox and as a result, he lost to them again.

A squeeze bunt. With a left-handed hitter. On a 2-0 count. With one out. With K-Rod in the bullpen. With Game 5 in Angel Stadium and a five-inning start from Dice-K waiting for you if you win. With the top of the order on deck. If you could define "taking the game out of the hands of the players," it would be a video of Erick Aybar's ill-fated bunt attempt in the ninth inning of last night's game with Mike Scioscia staring blankly on to the field as his season went up in flames.

You can tell me Aybar had eight sac bunts this year. I don't care. You can tell me it was a buntable pitch. I don't care. You can tell me the ump got the call wrong when Varitek dropped the ball. I don't care. There are a million ways for the Angels to score Reggie Willits from third base with two chances. There are a million things that can go wrong on a squeeze play. Try to imagine Terry Francona making the same call. You can't do it. Now remember that Francona's teams are 9-1 against Scioscia's in the playoffs. There is an old baseball adage that applies here; bad managers lose far more games than good managers win. Mike Scioscia lost Game 4 for the Angels last night.

The Angels won a game in the playoffs. Against the Red Sox. At Fenway Park. I know that seems improbable given recent history, but it happened. And if the Angels want a Game 5, it's going to have to happen again tonight. Interestingly, the Angels chose the schedule with an extra day of rest, so Jon Lester and John Lackey take the mound on regular rest tonight. The Angels might regret that choice given the way Lester dominated them over seven shutout innings in Game 1.

The game starts at 8:30, as the Red Sox try to become the final team to join the LCS fray (assuming the Rays current lead holds up) and the Angels try to force a decisive Game 5. Follow along after the jump as my fellow FanHouse luminaries and I chronicle the events.

Francisco Rodriguez is going to see some form of red socks in his nightmares for a long long time.

Last season it was Manny Ramirez who took Frankie deep to win a playoff game in Boston. This season, with Manny gone, the coast was seemingly clear for Rodriguez when he entered the game in the eighth with the Angels down 5-4 in Game 2 of their playoff series Friday night. But after the Halos tied it, David Ortiz drove one off the glove of a leaping Reggie Willits. And after a ground out by Kevin Youkilis, J.D. Drew took Rodriguez deep to give the Red Sox a 7-5 lead, and ultimately a 2-0 lead in their best of five series.

But what was so striking about that home run was Drew coming back to the dugout where he was greeted by happy teammates ... including one who told Drew "You set him up man, you set him up." Not only did the quote come through loud and clear on television, it must have come through loud and clear to Rodriguez. If a closer who had 62 saves in the regular season can be "set up" like he was a mere mortal, what chance does any other Angel pitcher have in this series?

It's a testament to the talent and the smarts of this Red Sox lineup that they can not only make Rodriguez look so ordinary, but that they can make the only team with 100 wins in the regular season look like a team with no chance to win Game 3 much less this series.

Red Sox fans can breath a sigh of relief: Josh Beckett, who's battling a strained oblique, threw a 27-minute, 65-pitch side session in Los Angeles on Thursday without any setbacks. From Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald:

"Provided there's no concerns coming out of his exams after the bullpen or the follow-up tomorrow, he should be on line for Sunday," pitching coach John Farrell said. "That hasn't been an official announcement but I will tell you that from the look in his bullpen today, he looks ready to go Sunday."

The workout was especially encouraging considering Beckett didn't hold anything back -- he was able to throw all of his pitches without any discomfort. It remains to be seen whether that translates into actual success come game time, but it's worth pointing out that he posted a 2.16 ERA in his last four starts of the regular season.

Of course, if the Red Sox win tonight (and Boston is currently riding a nine-game winning streak in the playoffs), Beckett's start on Sunday will be an elimination game. Nothing against the Angels, but given all of Beckett's postseason theatrics throughout his career, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which he doesn't come through with his "A" game, injury or not.

It was the eighth inning of Game 1 of the ALDS between the Red Sox and the Angels. Los Angeles had only mustered one unearned run off of the spectacular Jon Lester and was down by a run. Mark Teixeira had just been robbed by Jacoby Ellsbury, but Red Sox rookie reliever Justin Masterson was looking shaky. Vladimir Guerrero gets a base hit. Then Torii Hunter follows with a pop fly behind first base which dropped in behind Kevin Youkilis.

What followed was the decision that wound up dooming the Angels in Game 1: Guerrero went for third base and was out by a mile. The Red Sox would go on to win 4-1.

Every four years, Major League Baseball's postseason intersects with a presidential election. This is one of those years. In the spirit of the season, we here at MLB FanHouse have divided the playoff teams up for a series of debates. Here Andrew Johnson and Matt Watson discuss the ALDS between the Angels and Red Sox.

Andrew Johnson: Between the Brewers and Rays, the 2008 postseason has a pretty fresh feel. Not so much in this series. For the third time in five years the Angels will face the Red Sox in the first round. The last two meetings haven't gone well for Los Angeles -- both were sweeps in Boston's favor.

I don't anticipate a Red Sox sweep this time around, but it's hard for me to see the outcome being any different for the Halos. But why you ask? The Angels have 100 wins and the best record in baseball you say. They went 8-1 against Boston this season you add.

None of these facts faze me. Why? The Red Sox are simply a better baseball team. Their run differential of plus-151 is a staggering 83 runs better than the Angels. And it's all the more impressive considering Boston played 54 games -- roughly one-third of its schedule -- against the Blue Jays, Rays and Yankees. All three clubs won at least 86 games.

There was a bit of perhaps unsurprising news yesterday -- the Associated Press very quickly ran the numbers, and realized that the number of home runs this year was at its lowest point for fifteen years. Then, they asked Torii Hunter about it:

"I think the steroid testing has something to do with it," he said. "If there were any guys who were taking it, they're not taking it anymore. I'd say it's a small percentage, but of course it's going to have an impact."

Well then. Of course that's the obvious answer, and it's the one most people would immediately cite, but is it the only one? Hunter mentions ballpark size, too, which, in the inverse, is one of the steroid era's great unsung causes. But there's also the issue of pitchers. If we assume pitchers were taking steroids at roughly the same rate as hitters, then wouldn't home runs stay relatively steady?

I don't know. And that's the whole point -- without actual calculation, instead of my liberal arts-enabled quasi-scientific ramblings -- we don't know. Until that stuff gets done, neither Hunter nor I nor you really know how much steroids are at work here. That's why steroids suck. Even after all the nonsense, we still don't know what we're talking about.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

Heading into last week, there were two teams in all of baseball with nothing to play for. Sure, the Rays had clinched their first ever playoff appearance, but they still had to hold off the Red Sox for the AL East crown. Four divisions and both wild cards were still unsettled. The Cubs and Angels, however, were on cruise control.

While I'm sure it's nice to not have any pressure to win a major league game, too much of this can be a bad thing because guys can get rusty if it's extended. Rest is good, rust is not.

Let's examine the rest some players on each team have received, and whether or not this has surpassed the threshold of being productive in terms of a prediction of playoff success.

The world we live in sure is changing. All one has to do is look at this year's Presidential election to see that. No matter what happens, we're either going to have our first black President, or our first female Vice President. Obviously, the fine folks in MLB have taken notice of these changes, and now they want to show that they're pretty hip and with the times as well.

Which is why the Seattle Mariners have dropped hints that they may be hiring current Dodgers assistant GM, Kim Ng, to be their next general manager.

Mariners president Chuck Armstrong said his team is vetting a wide range of general manager candidates, pointedly leaving open the possibility of Seattle hiring the first female general manager in major league history.

"It's time for some fresh thinking," Armstrong said at the end of his 23rd season with the team - what he called his worst and most "miserable" one.

"We're color blind, gender blind," he went on to say. "We just want the best person that we think would be the best person for the Mariners as we move forward," Armstrong said.

The Mariners have also been talent blind lately, and they're hoping Ng could be the woman to fix that. If nothing else, she'll probably at least get the team to start dressing better.