The Best Team You've Never Seen

When ESPN was showing Yankees-Red Sox games and highlights ad nauseum last week, a friend of mine asked a great question:

How many times have the Angels been on TV this season?

Luckily for SoCal baseball fans, the Halos are on FSN on a regular basis – but as for the rest of the country, the best team in baseball is an unknown.
Yes, the Angels were on ESPN on Monday night (thanks to the fact they were playing in Boston), but the boys from Anaheim are getting nowhere near the national exposure the Yankees or Red Sox are getting.
While Boston deserves a majority of the nationally televised games as the defending champions, the Yankees don't exactly merit "Game of the Week" as a third-place team in the AL East that would be eight games back of Anaheim if they played in the West.
But, according to MLB’s national broadcast schedule, the Yankees have at least 20 nationally televised games this season. The Red Sox have 22, and the Angels have 13 nationally televised contests – well, make that eight if you discount the games against Boston (3) and New York (2).
In fact, the Angels aren’t scheduled to play on ESPN again during the regular season. Maybe ESPN will change its plans, maybe not. But as it stands right now, you better beef up that cable package, get MLB.tv, or tune into FOX Aug. 2 and 9 when the Halos play the Bronx Bombers, because you might not see these guys play again until the postseason – when you might just watch them play well into October.

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Oh yeah, and the Halos are flirting with no-hitters with John Lackey and adding punch to their lineup with first baseman Mark Teixeira from the Atlanta Braves. Teixeira, once everyone learns how to spell his name right (i before e except after t and x, what the heck?), could be a huge piece of the puzzle as the Angels gear up for this stretch run. I think the best stat I’ve seen about Teixeira in all the trade stories is this – over the past 162 regular-season games, only Philly’s Ryan Howard has more RBIs.
Said Teixeira in a teleconference call after the trade:

"The Angels have always been one of the best teams in the American League. … I just want to hopefully get them over the top. I'm not going to make any predictions."