I suppose a West Coast trip could have been worse, but Week 6 was still a disappointing one, as the Sox dropped 2 of 3 in both Anaheim and Seattle. Right now is, I think, a pretty good checkpoint for marking the end of the first part of the season and taking stock. Interleague play will start up next weekend, and we've got a showdown with Toronto coming up before that. Boston stands 22-16 at this point, a pace to win 93-94 games. We currently trail the Jays by three games and are 1.5 games up in the Sox. If the season ended today, we'd be in the playoffs, which would have the following matchups:
Boston-Texas
Toronto-Detroit
Los Angeles-Chicago
NY Mets-Milwaukee
What's been most interesting about this season is that at the start of the year, the Sox' hopes were seen as heavily resting on the Big Three of Beckett, Lester and Dice-K, with the offense hinging on a recovery from David Ortiz. The latter hasn't come anywhere close to happening. Dice-K's been hurt all year. Lester and Beckett have been awful. Yet the team is still right in the neighborhood of where most observers were projecting. It's not realistic to think it can hold this way for much longer, but it speaks volumes to the depth of the organization that we can have this many key players performing poorly or not at all, and still keep it going for a six-week period.
As we head into the season's second movement, Bos-Wash Corridor will be undergoing a minor modification in its format. Instead of recapping each series as it ends, I will be doing a twice-weekly column, one to be published Wednesday, the other on either Sunday night or early Monday morning after the week's games have been concluded. This post will take a look at the whole of major league baseball, look ahead to the key series, and delve specifically into who the Red Sox are playing and how we matchup with the coming opponents. The midweek post will focus on individual players, looking at the best at each position and examining how the Red Sox starter fits in.
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