The multi-team wild card hunt may be the most compelling race in the National League this season, but with the Red Sox building a commanding lead over the Angels in the American League wild card race, the spotlight in the AL this September is focused squarely on the division races in the East and West.

The perennial bullfight between the Yankees and the Red Sox in the AL East has proven once again that it will never die, but it’s on life support. Don’t let the 22-0 drubbing fool you; the AL East is still the Yanks’ to lose, and a Mauchian collapse is the only thing standing in the way. It seems only the AL West offers some semblance of mystery, with the Angels and their trademark bullpen of death trying to chase down the A’s and their rotation of aces.

At the end of the day, we’re in the familiar position of four teams vying for two division titles, and three playoff spots, in the AL. Through Sunday’s games, the Red Sox held a five-game lead over the Angels for the wild card; that means that Boston and New York can start setting their playoff rotations soon, knowing the second-place team in the AL East will be playing postseason ball regardless.

That leaves the AL West up for grabs. Here we see a major contrast in styles. The A’s sport arguably the best starting rotation in baseball, top to bottom. They also trot out an excellent team defense, led by vacuum cleaner Eric Chavez at third base and first basemaen Scott Hatteberg, who boasts the fifth-best fielding percentage in the league. Newcomers Bobby Crosby and Mark Kotsay round out a stellar defensive team.

Meanwhile, the Angels have employed a strong bullpen and efficient running game to supplement a good offense, and, more importantly, a starting rotation ranked just 11th in the league. The Angels’ effective use of the running game harkens back to the 1980s, when teams ran far more often. Everyone over the age of 20 remembers “Rickey Runs”; late in a game, it always seemed like Rickey Henderson was up when your team was playing him. He’d draw a walk or hit a single, steal second, perhaps steal third, and score on a passed ball, a cheap single, or a sacrifice fly.

That run was paramount in the game in question, and undoubtedly more valuable than another two-run homer in a 12-3 romp a week earlier. Teams with a world-class speedburner, like a Rickey Henderson or Tim Raines back then – or a Carlos Beltran now – could be more efficient than their opponents; they could eke out more wins from fewer runs.

That’s precisely what the Angels are doing in the AL West. People will point, not incorrectly, to the off-season acquisitions of players like Vladimir Guerrero and Kelvim Escobar when exploring the Angels’ success. But take a closer look at the numbers, and you’ll see that well-chosen stolen bases, and more importantly, picking your spots and not getting thrown out, can be the difference between contention and playing out the string.

Using a measure called Net Stolen Bases, a metric that allows us to strip out teams that get thrown out too often to make their thefts useful, the Angels come out on top of all playoff contenders, with 42. They’re followed by the Twins at 22, the Yankees at 15, and the Red Sox at five. Texas and Oakland both have figures below zero.

Anaheim is both willing to try for steals and effective when doing so. And it’s not just one guy. Jeff DaVanon, Guerrero, David Eckstein, Darin Erstad, and Adam Kennedy have combined for 74 stolen bases, each with a minimum of 13, and they’ve only been caught a total of 16 times. Sneaking men into scoring position is a controllable weapon, one for the most part not available to the Angels’ opponents.

The Angels’ chief rivals, the A’s, so often touted as the main scions of the Cult of On-Base Percentage, are actually winning games the really old-fashioned way: with pitching and defense. The A’s defensive efficiency – a stat tracked by Baseball Prospectus that measures the percentage of balls hit into play that a team converts into outs – is second in the league.

Oakland has been winning by rolling out Barry Zito, Mark Redman, and Rich Harden – none of whom are having great years by their standards – and buttressing them with pedestrian run-support and the fewest errors in the AL. The gaudy numbers posted by Oakland’s starting rotation, in turn, largely reflect how good the defense behind them really is.

It’s going to be a slugfest down the stretch, with the Angels and A’s fighting head-to-head six times in the final 10 games. But it won’t just be teams facing each other on the field; it’s also a battle of philosophies, and how they manifest themselves on the diamond. It’s great baseball, no matter which style suits you best.

This article was provided by Baseball Prospectus. The Sun will run exclusive content from Baseball Prospectus throughout the 2004 season. For more state-of-the-art baseball content, visit www.baseballprospectus.com.