Now Angels really are baseball's best

We don't think the Los Angeles Angels won the World Series on Tuesday, although it's quite possible they set fate in motion.

We do know they did the next best thing. The team with the best record in baseball made themselves the best team.

After all those Bill Stoneman years when the Angels stood pat at the trading deadline, trusted their pieces and refused to gamble on a short-term star who might have put them over the top, Mark Teixeira arrives.

The best player available at the trading deadline -- a power-hitting, scary middle-of-the-lineup bat -- turns the Angels into the most impressively balanced team in baseball.

Who'd have thought we'd ever see this day?

Congrats to Tony Reagins, the first-year general manager who may possess the adventurous side that Stoneman didn't.

The pitch-first, defense-second, hit-third Angels are now baseball's model team.

Honestly, this was a team that had shortstop Maicer Izturis batting third.

Please.

The Angels suddenly have that superstar tandem -- Teixeira paired with Vladimir Guerrero -- that every team craves, making top-drawer hitters like Torii Hunter and Garret Anderson even more dangerous as secondary run-producers.

As for Izturis, the strangest No. 3 hitter in ball (.263 average, three home runs, 32 RBI), he can move to second or eighth where he isn't so conspicuous anymore as the symbol of Angels' puniness.

And the Angels can cruise easily into the postseason. Their monstrous lead in the A.L. West is immaterial. This move was all about making the Angels feared in the postseason -- something that has never happened, not even in their only championship season in 2002 when steady role players like Scott Spiezio, David Eckstein and Adam Kennedy channeled Hall of Famers for a month, and the Angels stunned the baseball world.

The Angels aren't into "stunning" anymore. They would rather be the favored top dogs, and adding Teixeira puts them there.

As Reagins said, the upshot of the Teixeira deal is that the team has an even better chance of doing what it expected to do from the outset of the season.

"Our goal is to bring a championship to Southern California," Reagins said Tuesday. "Hopefully, we'll be playing deep into October."

"Deep" being the operative word. Playing against their undermanned divisional rivals, the Angels are already in the playoffs. Teixeira is about getting more than 11 runs against Chicago in five games of the AL Championship Series in 2005 and four runs in three games in the AL Division Series against Boston last year.

Of course, the postseason will always be a roll of the dice. Hot teams win. The Angels can thank that fact for their only championship.

But there also will be another baseball season next year.

The Angels would like to think that Teixeira is here for the long term, a guy who hits 30-something home runs and drives in 110 with his eyes closed every year.

The catch is that Teixeira will be a free agent when the holidays arrive and, with hard-nosed agent Scott Boras seeking every last million he can possibly squeeze out of every bidder, there is no guarantee Teixeira will be around next spring.

The beauty of this one for the Angels is that they didn't surrender multiple prospects, or even a major star. If it doesn't work out in Anaheim, all it will cost the Angels is Casey Kotchman, a very nice young hitter who figures to have a solid big league career.

But we all know that the easiest position player to find in baseball is a first baseman. The reason Teixeira didn't end up on any of a number of other contending teams, and the reason the Angels picked him up for Kotchman and a middling minor league pitching prospect, was because most contending teams are loaded with guys who can play a serviceable first base.

If Teixeira winds up in New York or Chicago or Boston next winter, the Angels will survive, and still be the favorite to win the AL West next year.

"That's a bridge we'll cross when we get to it," said Reagins when asked about the prospects of the Angels pursuing their Summer of '08 prize when the weather gets drizzly and cool. "That's something we'll have to pursue when we come to it."

Bet on it. The Angels are still run by owner Arte Moreno, the Man With the Plan. They are one of the few organizations that can afford the near-$20 million per year that Boras will ask for. And if Teixeira manages to produce along the lines he's used to (20 home runs, 78 RBI for Atlanta so far this season) for the next several months, the Angels will be in the middle of the bidding.

Reagins/Moreno will never be accused of overspending, but if doling out a few extra bucks to ensure that the Angels finally have a large-ball offense to go with their superior pitching, there's a good chance Mr. Rent-A-World-Series-Shot will be in an Angels uniform through 2012 and beyond.

Don't look now, but baseball's seat of power has jumped 3,000 miles west.

(Contact Gregg Patton at gpatton@PE.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)