Now or Never Time in Anaheim

The Los Angeles Angels have gotten off to an uncharacteristically bad start. "Regression to the mean" suggests that they will do better.

But it won't be enough better to allow them to contend, or even necessarily to take them to .500. The reason is structural and dates back to the ALCS last fall.

Only ONE of the Angels' starters, Jered Weaver, is pitching reliably. The others are not. Conspicuous by his absence from the rotation is former ace, John Lackey.

For Los Angeles to contend, they need at least three solid starters. Lackey is doing well elsewhere this year, meaning that he would have been the second.

Then it would have taken only the upgrading of one starter to put the Angels back in the hunt; now it takes two. And with the veteran Lackey on staff, it would have been easier to stabilize that third starter.

Lackey is now being paid $16 million a year by the Boston Red Sox as a number THREE pitcher. That is an amount that the Angels could, and should, have matched. For him to accept such a demotion, something must have gone terribly wrong. That something took place in last fall's pennant contest.

Lackey WAS struggling in his second start against the New York Yankees. But he wanted to continue when Manager Mike Scioscia relieved him. He left under protest: "It's MY ball, Sosch."

It was a reasonable baseball decision. It was a terrible MANAGERIAL decision, because Lackey would go free-agent at the end of the season.

This was a so-called "Morton's Fork" situation (both prongs of the fork lead to the same place). If he had been left in, one of two things would have happened.

Lackey would have pitched himself out of a jam, everyone would have been happy, and the Angels could probably have signed him for the equivalent of $82.5 million five year contract he took with the Red Sox.

The alternative was that Lackey would have gone down in flames, which would have reduced his market value, by perhaps $1 million a year or more. Then the Angels might have signed him for $15 million per instead of $16 million.

The Angels would have lost the ALCS in 2009 (which they did, anyway), but saved a "foundation player" for future postseason races.

With the bad blood created by the relief, it might have cost the Angels at least $18 million a year to sign Lackey. Meaning that one managerial decision could have cost $10 million over five years. Or at least its equivalent in lost games after Lackey walked.

Memo to general managers: Whatever your feelings on these kinds of issues, make sure that your field managers are on the same page.

There are times when a manager should NOT intervene. And take it from someone whose managerial style has been described as "heavy handed."