Boston Red Sox Baseball Team

Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said he did not consider using Reggie Willits to pinch-run for Vladimir Guerrero on Wednesday night after the slugger reached on a one-out single in the eighth inning, with the Angels trailing the Red Sox, 2-1. Guerrero, slowed in September by an irritated right knee, tried to go from first to third on Torii Hunter's bloop hit over first baseman Kevin Youkilis' head, running through third base coach Dino Ebel's stop sign, and was thrown out by about eight feet.

This could be the rare matchup that drives the purists and the stat-heads nuts. Live from Anaheim: The team most likely to swing at a bad pitch, against the pitcher most likely to throw one. The Angels are the team. Daisuke Matsuzaka is the pitcher. Patience will be a virtue at Angel Stadium tonight, but only in the visiting dugout. If Matsuzaka had to pitch against his teammates, he would wilt in the third or fourth inning.

When Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia showed up at Colorado's Coors Field during last year's World Series, he was denied entry by a security guard who mistook him for a fan. Watch Pedroia play, however, and it's hard not to mistake him for a 10-year veteran. But then the same could be said about several players on the Red Sox's youthful roster, who share more than just a limited number of birthdays. "Yeah," said Mike Lowell, at 34 the fourth-oldest player on the team.

What frustrates Manager Mike Scioscia about the Angels' recent postseason struggles isn't so much the nine-game playoff losing streak after Friday's 7-5 loss to Boston, but the manner in which they lost most of those games, playing nowhere close to their potential. "The [Red Sox] are a terrific club and we're a terrific club," Scioscia said before Game 2.

It was more agonizing than it was artful. But Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka's five-inning tightrope walk Friday has to be considered successful since it gave his team a chance to win Game 2 of the American League division series, which moves to Boston on Sunday with the Red Sox leading, 2-0. Matsuzaka retired the Angels in order just once, in the second inning, and 11 of the 26 batters he faced reached base.

BOSTON -- The Angels appear to be one bat shy of World Series caliber . . . again. Only this October, that bat doesn't belong to a slugger the Angels failed to acquire at the trade deadline. It's right in their dugout rack and belongs to a player in their current employ, Howie Kendrick.

BOSTON -- The Angels have no home runs, one extra-base hit and 19 singles in this series. That should not necessarily hamper a team that emphasizes the stolen base, except that the Angels have yet to steal a base, or even try. "You can't go out there and say, 'We're going to try to steal bases,' " Manager Mike Scioscia said Saturday. "If the opportunity presents itself, you try to take advantage of it."

BOSTON -- Even had they allowed themselves to dream, the Red Sox never would have dared to think they could come back to Boston just a victory away from winning the American League division series. Yet that's exactly where they find themselves heading into tonight's game at Fenway Park, where the Angels have won only once in the postseason -- and that win came 22 years ago. "We had talked about, 'Let's at least get a split [in Anaheim].

BOSTON -- After missing a chance to open the series in Anaheim with a strained muscle in his rib cage, Red Sox ace Josh Beckett missed a chance to end it Sunday in Boston, turning in the worst postseason effort of his career in a 5-4, 12-inning loss to the Angels. Arguably one of the best big-game pitchers in baseball, Beckett came in with six postseason wins in nine starts and a 0.56 earned-run average in the division series.

The Angels' season may have ended Monday night when they lost to the Boston Red Sox in their division series, but television's biggest loser was "Monday Night Football." In the Los Angeles market, Angels-Red Sox on TBS got a 9.3 rating, competitive with ABC's popular "Dancing With the Stars" (13.8) and well ahead of the 5.8 rating on ESPN for the Monday night game between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings. In Boston, the Red Sox are the drawing card. The baseball game got a 24.