October 7, 2007: Red Sox complete AL Division Series sweep by dominating Angels

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim held the best home record in baseball (54-27) in 2007. As a team, they had hit .305 at Angel Stadium. They hoped to draw on their home-field success to avoid a quick elimination by the Boston Red Sox in Sunday afternoon’s Game Three of the American League Division Series on October 7.

In Game One at Fenway Park, 20-game-winner Josh Beckett had shut out the Angels, 4-0, on four hits. Slugger Manny Ramírez had hit a walkoff ninth-inning homer to win Game Two, 6-3. The Angels had to win this one or their season was over—and the Red Sox had beaten them in eight consecutive postseason games dating to 1986.

Angels starter Jered Weaver, who had celebrated his 25th birthday three days earlier, was coming off a strong sophomore season for manager Mike Scioscia. He had been 13-7 with a 3.91 ERA and won five of his last six decisions.1 This was Weaver’s first career postseason game. He handled it well, allowing just four hits and two runs in five innings.

Pitching for Terry Francona and the Red Sox was 40-year-old Curt Schilling, in his first postseason start since a win in Game Two of the 2004 World Series. In his previous two postseason starts combined, he had allowed one earned run in 13 innings. At 8-2, he had one of the better records in postseason history. He was pitching on 11 days’ rest, and was facing an Angels’ lineup that was severely hampered by injury and illness.2

Neither team scored in the first three innings. In the top of the first, Weaver got Dustin Pedroia to ground out and struck out the next two batters, Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz. The Angels made contact off Schilling in the bottom of the inning, but, except for a one-out single by Orlando Cabrera, the balls went for outs.

In the second, Weaver got himself in trouble with a leadoff walk to Ramírez (on nine pitches) and a double to left by Mike Lowell. Weaver escaped the jam by getting J.D. Drew to hit the ball right back to him – he looked Ramirez back to third and threw to first – followed by strikeouts of Jason Varitek and Coco Crisp.

Maicer Izturis singled off Schilling with one out in the bottom of the inning, but Howie Kendrick hit into a 6-4-3 double play.

Weaver faced three batters in the third and got them all out. The Angels threatened to break through in their half. Designated hitter Juan Rivera led off with a single and took third on Cabrera’s two-out single. A four-pitch walk to Vladimir Guerrero loaded the bases, but left fielder Reggie Willits—who had come into the game in the start of the third inning, when an eye infection sidelined veteran Garret Anderson—popped up foul to catcher Varitek.

The Red Sox followed up Schilling’s third-inning escape with a fourth-inning power surge. Ortiz led off by lofting a home run to right, the 10th postseason homer of his career. Next up was Ramirez and, on the eighth pitch, hit one far out to straightaway center, his 22nd postseason homer.3 The two had combined for 55 home runs in the regular season, but this was the first time they had gone back-to-back.4

Schilling had a 2-0 lead, and he responded by dominating the middle innings. Three groundouts finished the Angels in the fourth. Mike Napoli’s one-out single in the fifth was fruitless, and Los Angeles went down in order again in the sixth.

In the meantime, the Angels were containing the Red Sox attempts to expand their lead. Youkilis hit into a double play to end a two-on, one-out chance in the fifth. In the sixth, after Weaver walked leadoff batter Ortiz on his 95th pitch, Scioscia summoned Scot Shields to relieve him. Shields got Ramirez to fly out to center and Lowell to ground into a 6-4-3 double play. Shields then struck out the side—Drew, Varitek, and Crisp—in the seventh. It was still just a two-run game.

Izturis doubled off Schilling to begin the bottom of the seventh, but it wasn’t a hard-hit ball. Center fielder Crisp seemed to take its measure and dive for it, but the ball popped in and out of his glove—not an error, but a two-base hit. Kendrick grounded out, second to first, with Izturis advancing to third. Rivera popped up to first base and Schilling struck out Napoli. The one run he had allowed in his prior two postseason games was one more than he allowed in the first seven innings of this game.

Boston’s bullpen had been warming up throughout the seventh. Schilling had thrown 100 pitches. There was no question that a reliever would come in to work the eighth. The Red Sox were hoping for an insurance run. Lugo worked a walk. Justin Speier relieved Shields. The first man he faced was Pedroia, who doubled into the left-field corner, Lugo scoring all the way from first thanks to a good slide, with Pedroia winding up on third after the throw to the plate.

Youkilis swung at the first pitch and hit a ball near the warning track a bit to the left of straightaway center, allowing Pedroia to easily tag and score. Ortiz singled over short. Ramirez walked and rookie Jacoby Ellsbury came in to pinch-run for him. Lowell doubled over third base, driving in Ortiz and sending Ellsbury to third. The Red Sox lead was now 5-0.

Darren Oliver replaced Speier. With the infield in, Drew grounded the first pitch to first baseman Kendrys Morales. His throw home was to the first-base side of the plate, allowing Ellsbury to slide in safely. Varitek doubled to left-center. Lowell scored and Drew held at third. Crisp singled into right-center, driving the sixth and seventh runs of the inning. Boston had a 9-0 lead, needing to get six outs to advance to the AL Championship Series.

Hideki Okajima, an All-Star in his first season after coming to the US from Japan, relieved Schilling. Chone Figgins—a .404 hitter at Angel Stadium in 2007—doubled to lead off. He never got as far as third. Two outs followed, then a walk, and the third out.

Dustin Moseley took over pitching for the Angels. Youkilis led off the ninth with a single, but a strikeout and double play followed in short order.

The game went to the bottom of the ninth. The Angels had gone scoreless in 25 of 26 ALDS innings in which they had batted, putting up zeroes outside of their three-run outburst in the second inning of Game Two.

Eric Gagné was called upon for the final three outs, perhaps as much as anything to get him some work and help keep him sharp. He’d pitched in 20 August and September games for the Red Sox, but not since the regular-season finale on September 30. His ERA had been 6.75, but he was on the postseason roster and had more than 350 games of big-league experience. In 34 games for Texas in the first part of 2007 before coming to the Red Sox, he’d had a 2.16 ERA.

The first batter he faced was Izturis, who hit a ball over first base and into the right-field corner where it was touched by a fan, a double. Izturis went to third on a wild pitch and scored on a sacrifice fly to right field. Nathan Haynes pinch-hit for Rivera and struck out. Robb Quinlan pinch-hit for Napoli and flied out to right.

The game was over, a 9-1 Red Sox win. In the three-game sweep, they had outscored the Angels, 19-4.

Scioscia shrugged, “We got hit by some injuries at the wrong time, some guys weren’t swinging the bats like they can at the wrong time—that’s baseball.”5

Los Angeles Times columnist T. J. Simers wasn’t inclined to let him off easily, blaming Scioscia for not pushing the team, after they had clinched, to fight for home-field advantage; the Angels were 2-7 in their final nine games.6

One might give the Red Sox pitchers their due, and credit the combination of Ortiz and Ramirez. As Kevin Baxter wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Ortiz and Ramirez were a combined eight for 15 (.533) with four homers, eight runs and seven runs batted in. Talk about a Dynamic Duo: Ramirez and Ortiz alone accounted for nearly one-third of Boston’s hits and more than half of the runs.”7

The Red Sox advanced to the ALCS against the Cleveland Indians, who had beaten the New York Yankees in a four-game ALDS.

Lowell said, “We didn’t come out of spring training to win the first round. We want to win the world championship.”8

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Keith Thursby.

Photo credit: Manny Ramírez, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball Reference, Retrosheet, and a two-part video of the game on YouTube.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ANA/ANA200710070.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2007/B10070ANA2007.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gl5E0sJmNQ (part one)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0w-F5N2hSQ (part two)

Notes

1 In his two starts against the Red Sox in 2007, he had held them to two runs over six innings on August 6 but 12 days later been hammered for six earned runs in 4⅓ innings.

2 As the Los Angeles Times noted, “Center fielder Gary Matthews Jr. did not play because of left knee tendinitis, [Garret] Anderson was hindered by an infected right eye, which forced him out of Sunday’s game after two innings, and first baseman Casey Kotchman spent Sunday in a hospital because of severe flu-like symptoms.” Furthermore, “Guerrero (left shoulder contusion), Chone Figgins (sore left wrist) and Maicer Izturis (tight left quadriceps) all played with minor injuries.” Mike DiGiovanna, “Angels Hit Empty Early,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2007: D1.

3 This home run tied Ramirez with Bernie Williams for 22 postseason four-baggers. By the time his career was over, Ramirez had hit 29.

4 The Ortiz home run went over the 385-foot sign in right. Seven pitches later, “Ramirez’s homer that bounced around the deco rocks was measured at 475 feet.” Reid Laymance, “Dynamic Duo Struck Again and Again,” Boston Globe, October 8, 2007: F4. They had previously hit back-to-back home runs in Game Three of the 2005 Division Series.

5 DiGiovanna, “Angels Hit Empty Early.”

6 T. J. Simers, “Angels Demise Rests Mostly on Scioscia’s Shoulders,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2007: D2

7 Kevin Baxter, “Ramirez, Ortiz Are a Lethal 1-2 Punch,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2007: D15. Baxter may have been a bit off in his math; Ortiz and Ramirez had accounted for 42 percent of the team’s runs. Bill Plaschke suggested that Angels owner Arte Moreno get himself a slugger, too. See Bill Plaschke, “Cheap Beer’s Nice, Moreno, But How About a Slugger?,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2007: D1.

8 That said, Lowell summed up where they stood: “I think we have to be extremely satisfied with the way we went about this series. We got great pitching, we swung the bats well, and I think we played a complete game of baseball.” Gordon Edes, “Sweeping Statement.” Boston Globe, October 8, 2007: F1. The Red Sox beat the Indians in a seven-game ALCS, then swept the Colorado Rockies in the World Series.