While the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have won 8-of-9 against the Boston Red Sox this season, the Red Sox have eliminated the Angels from the playoffs twice in the past 4 years. As per the norm, you throw out the regular season records and what’s happened in the past in the playoffs and go from there. Although you do know the Angels playoff exits handed to them by the Red Sox will be on the back of their minds.

As we did last year, let’s take a look back at our game recaps from all of the Red Sox vs. Angels games this season.

4/22 – Red Sox 7-6:

Trailing 5-1 in the 4th inning, the casual fan would think the Boston Red Sox would have no chance of coming back against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. What the casual fan doesn’t know is that this Red Sox team has been coming back in games all season.

And tonight was no different as the 1-2 punch of Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia plus a 2-run homer by Kevin Youkilis helped the Red Sox overcome that deficit and beat the Angels 7-6 sending the 37,982 fans at the Fens home with a smile. The win was the 6th straight for the Sox.

4/23 – Angels 6-4:

Another night, another emergency starter for the Boston Red Sox as Daisuke Matsuzaka fell victim to the flu bug. Jon Lester stepped in for Dice-K and threw the ball but unfortunately for the Red Sox it wasn’t good enough as the Angels used the long ball to win 5-4 in front of a record crowd of 38,172 at Fenway Park. The loss for the Red Sox ended their 6-game winning streak and is only the 3rd loss of the season at home.

4/24 – Angels 7-5:

The Los Angeles Angels couldn’t do much of anything with Boston rookie starter Justin Masterson. They just had to wait to get him out of the game and get into the usually solid Boston bullpen. Los Angeles got four runs in the seventh off of a trio of Red Sox pitchers to overcome a 3-1 deficit and turn it into a late 7-5 win over Boston Thursday afternoon at sunny Fenway Park.

Today was the third consecutive day that the Red Sox had a different starting pitcher than the regularly scheduled starter. Because of the flu bug working it’s way through the clubhouse it has caused the Sox to scratch both Josh Beckett and Daisuke Matsuzaka from their scheduled starts and push up Jon Lester a day. This forced Lester to work on short rest and then they dipped into their farm system for starts from David Pauley and today’s major league debut of Masterson.

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The big news yesterday for the UConn Huskies football team was that both QB Tyler Lorenzen and TE Steve Brouse will be out 6-8 weeks after undergoing surgery on a broken foot and broken leg respectively.

In other news, Lawrence Wilson was named Big East Defensive Player of the Week despite the fact that the Huskies gave up over 500 yards of total offense.

Randy Edsall did confirm that Zach Frazer will be QB1 for the Huskies this week during the Big East Coaches teleconference.

It was a rough weekend for Big East quarterbacks.

Desmond Conner of the Hartford Courant has a wrap up of the Big East Coaches teleconference yesterday.

Is UConn football the new UNC?

Rob Lunn answers some questions over at his blog Thoughts From A Fat White Guy.

Brian Bennett of ESPN.com has his weekly mailbag up and answers some questions about the Huskies.

UConn men’s basketball recruit Durand Scott talks about what he is looking for on his official visits.

David Gillett has a player profile of former Husky Ray Allen.

Before the Boston Red Sox departed for Anaheim in the late afternoon yesterday, they held an optional workout at Fenway Park along with a rally afterward. Obviously the biggest thing people wanted to know is how is Josh Beckett feeling. Beckett did not speak with the media yesterday and Terry Francona had nothing new to offer up either.

I think I talked about it last night at 10:30. I’m not sure what you really want to have happen between now and then. Although he does feel better, the idea would be for him to play catch tomorrow and have a side on Thursday. Again, there’s not a lot that can happen from my side to you guys from 11 o’clock until now.

I don’t know that you ever fully know the grade of something until it’s over – unless there’s some bleeding, which there isn’t. I don’t think its so much the grade as how quickly it goes away so he can pitch effectively – that’s more important.

Francona also spoke about the status of Mike Lowell and J.D. Drew as well.

He (Lowell) came out today and actually did pretty well. Hitting is not really the problem. In fact, I think he said that’s really the easy part. It’s some of the lateral movement and I don’t know if its starting and stopping – somewhat stopping, change of direction, things like that while he’s rotating, but he did have a pretty good day. We’ll try to answer some questions tomorrow – we don’t need to have the Olympics out there, but we need to see what’s going on. I think he does too. I think we’re all on the same page with this – in fact I know we are – but tomorrow certainly is an important day. We were not allowed to take ground balls. That was kind of a tradeoff for having the field because of what they went through yesterday and then with some of the work they’re doing. We weren’t planning on having the field, but because we were out there so little for practice time, that was kind of a tradeoff that we wouldn’t take ground balls in the infield – it was pretty chopped up.

J.D. did ok. He came out. Again, today was optional and he felt good enough to be able to participate in BP which was really a good sign.

We should know more today about the status of Beckett as he is scheduled to play catch in Anaheim during the workout this afternoon. We should also learn the roster either sometime late today or tonight as the roster has to be in by midnight.

The Red Sox are confident with or without Josh Beckett.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia says Boston’s pitching is their key to success.

Art Martone of the Providence Journal brought up a good point yesterday. If the Angels had known Beckett wasn’t going to start Game 1, would they have chosen to start on Thursday?

Mark Teixiera is looking forward to his first trip to the postseason.

Jonathan Van Every is happy to have a chance to be on the Red Sox postseason roster.

Francisco Rodriguez should garner some accolades for his performance this season.

Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald offers up his 2008 Boston Red Sox regular season report card.

Amalie Benjamin of the Boston Globe was able to sit down with Daisuke Matsuzaka in a rare one-on-one (actually one-on-two since he needs an interpreter) interview.

Gary Marbry of WEEI.com offers up some postseason nuggets.

If you want to tell the Curly Haired Boyfriend how much he sucks, he’s scheduled to chat over at Boston.com at noon today.

For more slices of Boston Red Sox goodness, head over to the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Hartford Courant and Providence Journal websites.

And if you must see what the enemy papers are saying you can check out the LA Times, Orange County Register and LA Daily News websites.

It was just another typical day after the regular season ends at Fenway Park as fans came out to honor members of the Boston Red Sox before they departed for Anaheim. This was the 5th time in the last 6 years that the Red Sox have held a rally before starting the playoffs.

In previous years, the rally has been held at Government Center in Boston and I do have to say that it’s been better in years past. Something about being out in public that just makes it more fun. I do understand the reasoning though of having it at the Fens since the Red Sox have to travel cross-country for their first round matchup with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The rally opened and closed with this video for the home audience.

[flv width=”425″ height=”300″]http://ianbethune.com/openclose.FLV[/flv]

video courtesy of NESN

Along the way there an interview with Larry Lucchino and some other videos which you’ve seen here today. They showed this video and this video plus this video as well.

After LL took the stage, the next victims of Tom Caron and Lou Merloni were Terry Francona and Kevin Youkilis.

[flash http://ianbethune.com/francyouk.FLV w=425 h=300]
video courtesy of NESN

The final two members of the Red Sox to be interviewed were Jason Bay and Dustin Pedroia, who took a page out of the Jim Rice fashion magazine.  My favorite part though was when Merloni compared the crowd to a Pittsburgh Pirates day game. Also Pedroia looked very humbled after the crowd started doing the MVP! MVP! chat.

[flash http://ianbethune.com/bayped.FLV w=425 h=300]
video courtesy of NESN

The Red Sox are now off to Anaheim to workout tomorrow and finalize the roster. We already know that David Aardsma, David Pauley, Devern Hansack, Chris Smith and George Kottaras won’t be with them. The rest of the September roster will be out in Anaheim though.

For the second time this season, Boston Red Sox lefty Jon Lester has been named the American League Pitcher of the Month for September 2008. Lester also won the award back in July.

Lester was 4-1 with a 2.14 ERA in 5 starts this month. He threw 33 2/3 innings allowing 8 earned runs on 26 hits and 13 walks.

This was also the third time Lester has won an award this season. He was also named the Co-Player of the Week with Magglio Ordonez for the week ending May 25th.

Lester will get the start in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on Wednesday night.

More UConn Huskies football news for you concerning injured quarterback Tyler Lorenzen and tight end Steve Brouse.

Tyler Lorenzen will miss the next 6-8 weeks with a broken foot.

Head coach Randy Edsall said during today’s Big East Coaches teleconference that both Lorenzen and Brouse will miss at least 6-8 weeks. That means the earliest either of them would return is the game against the Syracuse Orange on November 15th.

On the season, Lorenzen is 52-of-90 for 551 yards with a touchdown and 6 interceptions. He also has 40 rushing attempts for 200 yards with 2 touchdowns. Brouse has 3 receptions for 45 yards on the season but plays an integral part in the UConn rushing game.

Normally, we would think putting the backup quarterback Zach Frazer in would cause us some concern and we’d expect to see a very heavy dose of Donald Brown. I don’t see that happening though as Frazer showed a lot of moxie out there once he got his feet under him. And now that he’s had that chance, I fully expect to be a capable leader for the Huskies for the next 6-8 weeks and maybe beyond.

For the second straight week, a member of the UConn Huskies football team has taken home a weekly Big East honor as Lawrence Wilson was named Big East Defensive Player of the Week.

In the win against Louisville on Friday night, Wilson had 6 tackles, an 18-yard fumble return and of course the big blow was the 45-yard interception return for a touchdown that gave the Huskies the win.

Donald Brown was also named to the Big East Weekly Honor Roll for his effort on Friday night. Brown, who leads the nation in rushing, had 33 carries for 190 yards and a touchdown.