Oakland Park Baseball

After a humiliating 5-game sweep at Fenway at the hands of the Yankees, I've got to believe the Red Sox are done in 2006. They're 4 and 3.5 games back of the White Sox and Twins, respectively, and while that doesn't seem like an insurmountable deficit, it appears that those two teams are superior. Schilling has been their only reliable starter, and even he has been knocked around a bit lately. Their middle relief sucks: Manny DelCarmen? Julian Tavarez? Though they score a good number of runs, there are some easy outs in their lineup once you get past Papi and Manny. Finally, if Manny doesn't come back soon from his sore hamstring, whatever slim chances they might have are kaput.

Any thoughts?

I would tend to agree with you on this perspective, Dan.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but..... Some of you might recall the mid-season bet that involves some people on this forum. Well, let's take a peek at how the Red Sox tanking would affect those involved in the bet.

Of the 6 people in on the bet, 5/6 said the Red Sox would win the AL East. Only Dan Rivera (Yankees) felt otherwise.

This certainly suggests that Dan R. is in a good position to put himself ahead of others---however, unfortunate for Dan R., he selected the Red Sox to win the AL Wild Card. The other bet participants chose either the Tigers or the White Sox to win the Wild Card. This will likely offset the advantage Dan R. had by choosing Yankees for AL East.

So while Dan R. is looking real good in terms of the AL East, he's in trouble in the AL Wild Card. Delving a bit further, Dan R. (and myself) appear to be in possible trouble in the AL West because we selected the Angels to win the division, and right now the A's are looking very strong.

5/6 people felt the Tigers weren't for real and chose the White Sox to win the AL Central. Only Nick believed the Tigers would finish that division on top, so if he's right, he'll be in a very good position.

As for winning it all, 3 people picked the Mets, and others selected the Cardinals, White Sox, and Tigers. In this style bet, even if you missed some of the division winners, you can still win by having your World Series Team actually win (since they'll have to win 2 series along the way, so that's 3 correct choices if your WS team wins it). So selecting the right WS winner can offset bad choices for division winners.

NOTE: these choices were made at the All-Star break.

i dont think the red sox are finished yet. The twins will find a way to fuck it up, the white sox starters refuse to get it together.

what weak outs in there line up, every starter is batting over .275 except lopez.

And their pitching is that that bad, wells looks good again. schilling is pitching fine. Some how beckett has a 13-5 despite a 5.65 era, and then they have some rookies.

So i dont think the red sox a out of it