They got to twenty games over 500 at around 50 games or so and then lolly-gagged at 500 ball and almost blew a 14.5 game lead. Where were you during the white knuckle closing? Man, win ONE game in a best of five and crown me World Series Champions.

It’s going to be alot harder than that Burt.

I agree that Becket is the ace; that does not guarantee results in the post season. You have to play the games.

Outside of Pedroia, Ortiz, Manny and Lowell, the sawks lineup is a wasteland. Too many holes, too many reststops to put away the best pitchers in the league. While I think they have a very good chance of getting by the haloes, those chances evaporate when facing either the yankees or cleveland.

If they can win game 2, they are on their way. Will dicey-K be diceK? One quality start out of his last five or six and that against the questionable twinkies. Management bet the farm on him and come this past september he was toast, just like everyone had predicted. They should have rested him for a couple weeks like the Yankees did with Mussina. If he sucks, some heads need to roll. I hope I’m wrong but I think they really has abused him. The results are in the pudding though. And this is the pudding, the postseason.

Varitek is a glaring defensive weakness at catcher. He still calls a great game but sizemore and figgens will eat him for lunch and pick their teeth at second. Which is another reason why wake does not pitch in the postseason. It’s a different kind of baseball and boston fans and sportswriters have never paid that much attention to it when the sawks weren’t in it. Highly sophisticated football fans, nitwits for baseball fans. bob ryan is the only baseball writer in town.

I say that because I also follow the Yankees, although I’m not a Yankees fan. If you want to beat the Yankees, you have to know the Yankees. The Yankees no longer make the empty your farm system for a big name trades. They haven’t done it for several years now. It’s more like, unload a productive superstar (Sheffield, Johnson) for some top picks in another team’s farm system. The sawks are still giving up top talent for big names and it has bit them on the ass so many times now that the fans need to be constantly remincded of HOW BAD this management reallly is.

So the answer to your column is NO, they don’t have the pitching or the catching and their hitting can be paltry. They’ll be lucky to get by the Angels because of their homefield advantage and the haloes health concerns. A healty Angels team playing with home field advantage would clean their clock. Cleveland is the team to beat but if Pettite does the impossible today, then its the Yankees in four games. I love seeing baseball back in jacobs field though. The fans are great there and the Indians have great management. They deserve to win it.

And anyone out of the ALeague will cream the NLeague. They shouldn’t even play a serious this year. I’m forgetting the cubs, I apologize. They need to get to the serious so they can lose in seven.

The Red Sox will win the World Series because Varitek, Drew, Crisp, and Lugo are ready to combine for a 850+ OPS in the postseason.

The Red Sox will win the World Series because their “Real Man of Genius”, Jon Papelbon (”Mr. Empty Bud Light Box Wearer”), needs to celebrate three more times.