...you now get some sort of vindication, thanks to an announcement by the creator of Ultimate Zone Rating that he's revised the UZR formula to better account for ballparks like Fenway that have unusual outfield layouts. Bay and Ellsbury - another member of the negative UZR club - had their 2009 totals increased, with Ellsbury rising from 18.3 runs allowed to a slightly less ugly 10.3 runs allowed, and Bay making the leap from 13.8 runs allowed to a much nicer 1.2 runs prevented.

However, before anyone see this change in formulas as a sign that the Sox screwed up by letting Bay go, don't get too excited: it turns out Theo & Co. have their own formula for measuring defensive capabilities, and they saw both Bay and Ellsbury as being about average in the field. This revelation led John Tomase to conclude that Bay's time in Boston was done earlier than we initially thought:

The new UZR wouldn’t have impacted the Sox’ decision to let Bay walk. Even with the adjustments, Bay is still at minus-55.9 runs lifetime, though part of that can be explained by his 2007 knee surgery.

More importantly, we now know he was as good as gone once contract talks collapsed at the All-Star break over his medicals.

It's an interesting conclusion, though I have to wonder if the deal still had a chance until the two parties realized they were nowhere near meeting on price.

Regardless of how this game turns out, it's seems fairly safe to say that as sure as at least one person behind home plate will be waving like an idiot at the camera while talking on their cell phone, the Yankees will end up winning the AL East. I've come to terms with this idea, while blessing the idea of the Wild Card and its power to salvage the season. We still have a shot at the final glory, you see, so it's easier to wave goodbye, however wistfully, to one of the prizes to be obtained along the way.

While contemplating this state of affairs, I wondered if anyone had ever done a statistical study about the effect of the difficulty of the schedule on the likelihood of making the post-season. For example, if the Red Sox have a schedule where tough items like a road trip against New York followed by a swing out West are the norm, are they less likely to win the AL East crown or the Wild Card? Or, because each team plays every other team in their league a certain number of times, are the tough moments games by the easier ones?

Were I to do such a study, I'd probably use each team's Pythagorean for the year: after all, the idea is to determine how "tough" each team is to face, and a measurement of their predicted winning percentage as determined by runs allowed and scored seems like a good measurement. After that, I'd take all of the available data and start looking for patterns to see whether or not I could determine what the minimum winning percentage would be to define a "tough" team. From there, I could make some judgments about the layout of a tougher schedule and see where each team finished.

Beckett at the helm is a nice way to end the first half: three hits, no runs, no walks, seven strike outs, and a league-leading tie of 10 wins with teammate and fellow All-Star Tim Wakefield (himself the subject of a nice profile in today's Globe). Beckett's 2009 ERA+ is 140, 22 points higher than his career average; his WHIP is 1.149, well below his career average of 1.216, and overall he looks far more impressive than the 2 and 2 starter with the 7.50 ERA that started the year.

But yesterday's domination of the lowly Royals was more impressive than the piling up of some sweet statistics that pulled Boston to three games above New York in the AL East standings: after eight years at the major league level, Josh Beckett has amassed his 100th win. Such milestones lead to speculation, for even as we recognize that the win is a flawed statistic for measuring the value of a pitcher, we wonder - especially these days, when conventional wisdom suggests that we'll never see such winners again - whether or not Beckett will win 200 more and achieve the milestone that has helped 20 pitchers find their way into the Hall. So, will he?

First, a few assumptions:

• I'm using Beckett's winning percentage in Boston (.656) because it seems likely that he'll continue to pitch for teams of Boston's caliber (providing the support necessary for amassing a large body of wins) for the productive portion of the rest of his career.
• To be consistent, I'm using his 27 starts per year average from his four years in Boston, which is roughly consistent with what an adjusted starts per year average would be over his career.
  
• Because Beckett is a power pitcher, I'm assuming "the productive portion of the rest of his career" means 10 years, when he's 39.
  

Now, the results:

• 27 stars a year for 10 years is 270 starts.
• With a .656 winning percentage, Beckett would need to make 305 more starts to win 200 games.
• 305 is more than 270.

Not looking good, but there's some room for adjustment. For example, if you adjust the number of productive years to 12, you have 324 starts, which would be enough for more than 200 wins. If you upped the average number of starts a year to 31, you'd also have enough starts for 200 wins. If you changed the winning percentage to reflect the upcoming years of Beckett's prime, you might find enough 20 game-winning seasons to make a difference. It's a tough climb to a vaunted milestone, but Beckett might have the luck and the success to go the distance.

Tony Massarotti and his super-branded page of wonders (seriously: what's with that massive leaderboard?  Is Massarotti really that much of a sports journalism celebrity?  And do you think Shaughnessy and Ryan sit around and bitch about all of the special attention Massarotti gets?) have a round up of the Sox thus far in 2009.  Most of it isn't too surprising: the offensive has holes, the defense has holes, the starting pitching hasn't been the knockout we'd expect, etc.

Well, the Sox almost lost to BC for the first time ever before realizing where they were and what they were doing, and then lost pretty soundly to the Twins, but hey, is baseball again, is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes! The games aren't important.

But I'll tell you what's getting me all puffed up with restrained emotion right now: the MLB network's post-game feed, counting down the nine best pitching seasons in baseball history (word to the wise: Bob Gibson in 1968 looks unhittable). Number five was Greg Maddux in 1995 and for a quality measurement they used - get this - ERA+. Yes, that's right, a portion of the advanced baseball statistics tool kit, right there on the league's official network. It was awesome.

And yes, I know: I'm such a nerd.

So Charles P. Pierce has an idea: bring back Manny. He's not kidding, either: let bygones be bygones and get a bargain price for a fantastic hitter who's demonstrated he's got plenty of gas left in the tank, filling a potential lineup hole in the process. While the Sox are at it, they can use a Manny signing to offload Jason Bay while he still has value and acquire...well, I don't really know at this point, since Boston is swimming in replacement-level pitching arms, but something.

Madness, you say. Pure idiocy, you say. Turn in your writing license, says irate commenter GEO, who - ironically enough - spends most of his post violating what I do not doubt would be the terms of a "writing license" with his all-caps assault and atrocious grammar. I was all aboard for Mr. Pierce's head, too, until I realized that his statements have a larger context: his post is a poster child (you like what I did there?) for the war between stats types and trad types.

To review, the modus operandi of a pure stat-head is that anything that cannot measured - things like chemistry, drive, fortitude, and all of the other stuff that Fire Joe Morgan lovingly lumped under the term "intangibles" - is irrelevant to the argument of relative value. Pure trad types, on the other hand, pooh-pooh the idea of using what they see as increasingly obscure measurements that cloud the spontaneous aspects of the game, preferring to give equal credence to a player's leadership abilities as they do to his ability to get hits. Pierce's prose suggests that he sides with the former camp in his views:

Cruising the sports pages the other day, I noticed that there is a free agent out there who’s hitting .314 lifetime with 527 home runs and who, last year, almost singlehandedly lifted a mediocre bunch of Los Angeles Dodgers into the playoffs. He hit 17 home runs down the stretch and knocked in 53 runs in as many games. And, almost unbelievably, he’s on the market. Right now.

In other words: screw the circumstances of Manny's departure; he can do the one thing that teams pay baseball players to do, and he can still do it far better than the average player. Indeed, it sounds like we can take things one step further: to focus on Manny's attitude and his performance off the field (or maybe just away from the plate?) is to blind one's self to the truth that baseball players are all replaceable parts of greater or lesser quality. The Sox can use Manny to construct a winning team...and so they should.

While the Red Sox continue their bargain basement shopping for damaged spare parts, the Herald poses an interesting question: would you rather have Brad Penny or A. J. Burnett? They cite some numbers that favor Penny (of course), but I was curious, so I took a look at each pitcher's historical numbers on FanGraphs.

As you can see, Burnett's numbers make him look like a lot more of an average-to-better pitcher than Penny, who seems to have done a lot of climbing towards mediocrity even before he hurt himself last season. To be honest, I'm impressed: these graphs make Burnett look a lot better - and make New York's investment a lot more reasonable - than I had been previously willing to admit. However, before I tucked off into a bout of green-with-envy misery over what seems like a distant second place splash to New York's $82.5 million acquisition, I happened to read David Golebiewski's analysis of both signings. Golebiewski's take on Burnett isn't too surprising - in short, if he stays healthy, he can dominate - but in his piece on Penny, he makes one crucial point that had me flipping an emotional bitch faster than you can say "2003 Marlins Reunion in Boston": statistical projections have a healthy Penny giving up 58 runs in 127 innings, far outshining the replacement-level starter who statistics project to give up 77.6 runs in the same time period. Couple that projection with a paltry $5 million deal and the Penny acquisition starts to make a lot of sense.

Therefore, since I'm all too happy to place my faith in the numbers, I'm at ease with the Penny pickup. New York can have its big-money contracts; the Yankees need them to have a shot in 2009. The Sox may be spending far less money, but they're still in a great position to compete.

Chip Caray just called J.D. Drew's power "Mantle-like." I love J.D. Drew (especially right now), but I have no idea what this statement means. Especially since Mickey Mantle's career isolated power total is about 40 points higher than J.D. Drew's. And that's a big difference.

Fun fact: when Mickey Mantle was 36 (his final year, in 1968), he had a .237 batting average, but still managed to get on base about 39 percent of the time, which means a ridiculous number of walks. '68 was Mantle's worst season after his rookie year and he still managed to be 42 percent better than the average player.

Hart Brachen says Zen...I say statistics. Either way, everyone wins (except the Jays).

Since Friday's predictions went so swimmingly, let's see if I can predict the course of the series against the Indians, too:

• In 2008 (which amounts to two games, but Baseball Reference sums this up as 20 games because there were 20 batters involved. In retrospect, that's a pretty odd way to do the calculation.), the Sox offense has splits of .347/.415/.556/ against the Indians. Those two games were in Cleveland, so their relevance is a little questionable, but hey: at one point in the year (mid-April, to be precise), we could hit the Tribe's pitching. We'll just ignore the fact that one of the pitchers was Paul Byrd, mkay?
  
• At Fenway, the Red Sox offense boasts splits of .293/.374/.470, which are fine and dandy numbers, except that they include the entirety of the year when, you know, we had a full lineup and not middle-lineup guys with balky tendons and spasming muscles. In September, the tape and glue job we've got running to power us into the playoffs is hitting a much more pedestrian .263/.348/.447.
• Our leadoff hitter just woke up and realized it was September. Actually, that's not fair: as befitting a fancy-pants college boy, he did an intellectual analysis of his swing and discovered (and fixed) the holes causing his extended slump. The results are the same no matter what, though: he's got a 12 game hitting streak where he has six multi-hit games and splits of .345/.368/.545. Heating up for a repetition of the 2007 post-season extravaganza? I'm all for it.
• Of the four pitchers going this week, only the former Indian has anything approaching respectable career numbers against Cleveland: Paul Byrd has a 1.60 ERA and a 2:1 strikeout to walk ratio in 45 innings against the Tribe, dating back to the early part of this decade. Lester and Wakefield have middling numbers, while Josh Beckett has surrendered 18 earned runs in 24.2 innings. Of course, he's also got almost 4 strikeouts for every walk and it's September, a mystical time when, like Sir Gawaine and his tripled strength at the zenith of the sun, Beckett waxes most powerful. I'd say a split with a good possibility of a series victory seems is the most likely result.
  

A few statistics heading into thes pivotal/not so pivotal (all depending on your answer to the question: how badly do you, as a Sox fan, want the Sox to win the AL East?) games against Toronto:

• As a club, the Boston offense has team splits of .221/.291/.399 in the Rogers Centre. Those aren't their worst overall numbers, but they're among the worst for the number of games played.
• Over the same time period, the pitching staff has compiled a 7.10 ERA in the Rogers Centre, almost a full run worse than their next toughest assignment, Rangers Ballpark. Some of it's been pretty wretched luck (BABIP of .316), but I knew there was a reason why I start thinking about the detention center on the first death star every time the Sox play a series in Toronto. I'd so rather see these games happening in the Band Box of Eutaw Street.
  
• Paul Byrd has a 3.93 ERA and a 4:1 strikeout to walk ratio in 34.1 innings in the Rogers Centre. His 0.96 WHIP ain't too shabby, neither. Score the man some runs and we just might win tonight's game.
• Dice-K has a 3.79 ERA, a 3.71:1 strikeout to walk ratio, and a 1.21 WHIP over 19 innings on the Jays' home turf. As he somehow keeps managing to win games this year while expending more pitches than the Fed's sent out dollars in corporate bailouts (a topical joke - how clever), I probably shouldn't be worried about Sunday's outcome.
• Jon Lester's stats in Toronto are stab-me-in-the-eye terrible and I refuse to discuss them.
  

We better hope that when we meet the Rays in the playoffs we score a lot more runs than they do, or we are Effed to the Ayyyy.

Just for kicks, I took at a look at the results of the 17 games the Sox and Rays have played thus far, to confirm whether the results of the past few games (squeakers won by the Rays in the bottom of the ninth or in extra innings) were really as common to Boston/Tampa contests in 2008 as they suddenly felt.

Unfortunately, the results match my initial intuitions.

Going into tonight's contest, the Sox are 8 and 9 versus the Rays. In all nine losses, Boston has never lost by more than three runs; they've lost once by three, twice by two, and a really demoralizing six times by one run. Just as bad are the run differences on the win side: never less than three runs, with an average of five. Of course, these are your 2008 Sox, the team whose batting splits drop 30 points (.293/.374/.470 at home, .271/.347/.430 away) when they hit the road; some drop off will occur and we're just reaping the whirlwind when we play the Rays in Tampa. I guess I should grateful: those splits are the best in the AL for both home and away and they're more consistent than the leading teams in the NL. I just hate losing games in the last few minutes of the night.

Yanks Fan Sox Fan writer Paul SF posted an analysis today of something that's been on all of our minds since Halladay's complete game effort on Saturday: doesn't it seem like there's something about the league's better pitchers that consistently makes Boston's offense look foolish? Check out his article for the full analysis, but it turns out that sinking feeling in your stomach isn't just a symptom of a myopic focus on the outcome of a single game: the Sox really don't hit the best pitchers as well as their competitors. As Paul points out, that's going to be a particularly big problem once/if we hit the playoffs, when we'll be facing the best of each team's rotation in each series...unless the hitting heat these veterans displayed last year comes back with a vengeance. Then we should be ok, no?

A few months ago, I received a copy of Eric Seidman's recently-released book, Bridging the Statistical Gap, that the author graciously agreed to send to me. As you can probably guess from the title, Bridging the Statistical Gap is a book about baseball statistics, but with a twist: looking to show "more casual fans that they're already very close to understanding the ultimate goal in sabermetrics but just don't realize it yet," Seidman wrote his opus hoping to lessen the gap of understanding between baseball fans. Think of Bridging the Statistical Gap as a field guide to the motivations of your modern stathead and you'll get the idea behind the inspiration.

For the most part, Seidman succeeds in his quest, primarily because he knows where to start. The book begins with a discussion of batting average - long a battleground between statheads and traditionalists - and why it (or slugging percentage or on-base percentage or isolated power or on-base plus slugging) is not the be-all end-all of statistical measurements of hitters. But as a part of his bridging philosophy, Seidman doesn't throw batting average out entirely; he brings up the slash line instead, incorporating batting average into a larger statistic that gives a slightly clearer picture of a batter's abilities, letting the novice take refuge in the familiar while offering him or her the opportunity to learn about more indicative numbers.

Seidman continues the theme of building on known quantities to reach unfamiliar ground, using the familiar metric of the quality start to introduce his own statistic (the adjusted quality start) and discuss new ways to measure the win/loss records of pitchers. As with the batting average discussion, the chapters on pitchers are full of clear explanations and examples of Seidman's ideas in action. Your head might spin a bit from all of the number tables, but the ideas have the power to stick.

The remainder of the book focuses on practical examples of statistics in action, albeit in the type of estoric situations number geeks love: Michael Jordan's year in minor league baseball; a new look at the old debate on clutch hitting; Cy Young and the greatest pitchers of all time; insight on what makes a great playoff pitcher. The point of all of these chapters is the same, though: anyone can understand (and dispute, if they choose) the methodology. Anyone can read the results and use the numbers in their own arguments about best and worst, taking part in the rituals that fans enjoy. Bridging the Statistical Gap doesn't have all of the answers and it doesn't answer all of the questions, but it does a great job of starting up a dialog that lets anyone participate.

This post on Joe Posnanski's blog caught my eye because I attempted (unsuccessfully) to acquire Ziegler for my fantasy team yesterday. Named after A's reliever Brad Ziegler, it's a good illustration of a new statistic in development.

Clay Buchholz may not be living up to his promise at the moment, but he seems to be the victim of extremely poor luck: his BABIP for 2008 is an astronomical .364, over 100 points higher than his 2007 total (which was far lower than the .300 that defines "average"). Statistics say there's a better pitcher in there somewhere; maybe he'll show up before Colon comes back and makes the point moot.

Jon Lester, on the other hand, seems to be a golden god - or so says Peter Bendix over at Beyond the Box Score. Bendix points out that Lester's problematic stats (ERA, K/9, and the oh-so-worrisome BB/9) have all improved - not only since 2007, but in the twelve starts since his no-hitter, which seems to be a statistical turning point. Bendix suggests Lester might be the best pitcher in the AL, which seems a little extreme until - to tie the two ends of this post together - we note anecdotally that Lester does seem to have become the Type B pitcher ("An extreme ground ball pitcher who keeps walks down") Posnanski talks about in his Ziegler post and, more importantly, that Lester's Ziegler number for his last thirteen starts (starting with the shutout) is 122.4, higher than list-leader Brandon Webb's 112.6. Seems like Bendix has a good point...

I spotted the following headline this morning: "Red Sox’ Buchholz had good stuff, but Lackey was better." 'Odd,' I thought, 'How do you figure?' Could a guy who gave up five runs really have "good" stuff? As it turns out, there's some room for argument. Consider the facts:

1. We're viewing Buchholz's start behind the blinding glare of Lackey's near no-hitter. Given the circumstances, only a pitching duel would make Clay look good.
2. Buchholz might be responsible for five earned runs, but only three of them scored when he was on the mound - the other two came home after Craig Hansen took over in the seventh.
   
3. Buchholz's line without those two additional earned runs (6.1 IP, 3 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, 90 pitches/57 strikes) qualifies him for a quality start, a statistical measurement of quality.
4. Buchholz left the game with runners on first and third and one out. It's possible a pitcher with better control than Hansen might have prevented the runner on first from scoring, but the runner on third seems likely to have scored no matter what.

Point number four is the difference: if those two runs don't score, Buchholz ends up with a decent-looking night. Should he be punished for the two base runners his relief allowed to score?

Fortunately, we can give that whole argument a miss by relying on a statistic instead: Game Score. Game Score figures out the value of a pitcher's start by starting with 50 points, adding points for positive actions (innings pitched, strikeouts) and subtracting points for negative actions (hits, walks, runs). Results above 50 are considered quality starts - "good" in terms of the article headline. Last night, Buchholz scored a 41. He did not have good stuff.

Final Score: Boston Red Sox 3, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 5

Hey, it's like deja vu all over again! With some variation, we had a staked lead, a meltdown, and - you guessed it - a loss! I guess we should be glad that the starting pitching and the relief pitching handed off the duties of blowing the game this time, and that the offense pulled their all too familiar road trick knocking in a small enough number of runs to try - and fail - to tip the balance between winning and losing. The Sox aren't the Angels, people; their pitching isn't good enough to win an obscene number of one or two run games. It's enough to give you hives, really, or maybe just make you homicidal. I'm sure Robin's drinking himself into a stupor right now just thinking about it.

Let me drop some knowledge on ya: on the road, the Sox have 300 more at bats, but only thirty more hits than they do at home. They're five percent (i.e., 50 points) more likely to get on base at Fenway; nine percent (or 90 points) more likely to hit for power. Boiling things down to my favorite metric, OPS+, the away version of the 2008 Red Sox are 13 percent above the average team, while at home, they jump to 22 percent above average. That's not the sort of difference you want to see at this point in the season, no matter how many home games the Sox have left. I'm not looking forward to these next three games against Seattle.

As we await the start of the second half of the season tonight at 10:05, I thought I'd share some observations about the current AL East standings, using a statistic I learned about yesterday: third-order wins.

About Third-Order Wins
For those of you unacquainted with any wins of any order beyond what you see in the newspaper box score, third-order wins are one of those statistical measurements that attempts - like the majority of non-mainstream baseball statistics - to give a more complete picture about the abilities of a baseball player (or, in this case, a baseball team). Specifically, third-order wins compute a team's win/loss record using two other stats: AEqR and AEqRA.

AEqR (Adjusted Equivalent Runs) measures the number of runs a team generates per out, adjusted for the quality of opponents they faced; AEqRA (Adjusted Equivalent Runs Allowed) measures the number of runs a team allows per out, adjusted for the quality of opponents faced. The adjustments relate to how well the opponent team pitches or hits; runs scored against a team like the Rangers, for example, will count less in AEqR than runs scored against a team like the A's, because the A's have a much better pitching staff than the Rangers. The inverse is true of AEqRA; runs scored by a team like the Red Sox will count less towards an opponent's AEqRA than runs scored by a team like the Blue Jays, because the Sox have a much better offense than the Jays.

Third-order wins combines AEqR and AEqRA into another stat that uses the measurements of runs scored and runs allowed to come up with adjusted win and loss totals that reflect how a team should be doing. Why do these numbers matter? Well, the difference between a third-order win and loss total and a real win and loss total tells you how lucky or unlucky a team's been; team with a real win total lower than their third-order win total have been unlucky, because they've acculumated fewer wins than the number of runs they've scored says they should. The cool thing about all of these numbers is that they can quantify a gut feeling about a team's performance into a measurement.

The 2008 Red Sox and Third-Order Wins
So, when it comes to luck, how are the Red Sox doing so far? Not too well, unfortunately, which shouldn't come to a surprise with anyone familiar with the tender ministrations of the Red Scare. The Sox are currently 57 and 40, but their third-order wins total put them at 62 and 35. Five games difference is bad enough, but rating the rest of the AL East by the same scale, the Sox would be five games up on the Rays instead of a paltry half game. These things are supposed to even out in the long run, which means one of two things: either we're all screwed and the adjustment in luck means less runs scored or more runs allowed in the second half of the season, or we're playing with house money and Boston's record is about to jump ahead of the competition. Personally, I'd prefer the later

Final Score: Boston Red Sox 12, Baltimore Orioles 1

That's a little more like it! .300 team hiding in the corpse of a .400 team indeed.

Look over the headlines today and Kevin Youkilis' first grand slam is at the top of every story, which put me in a contemplative mode about the nature of grand slams. Statistically, knocking in four runs with one swing gets different results depending on your metric: batting average goes up two points, on-base percentage not at all, slugging percentage - the measurement of hits expanded to include total bases per hit - up a more appreciable eight points. If in the unlikely chance that the next ten years or so sees Youkilis hit a large number of grand slams - enough to catch up Manny, for example - history will mark this first fully-loaded moonshot as the start of a rare accomplishment whose category leaders stand in the middle twenties.

But some percentage increases and membership in a club of fortunate home run hitters just about sets the limit on the scope of the statistical value of a grand slam, and there's only so much value we can assign to a hit that we couldn't even tease out of a stat line in fifty years. To take the argument one step further, the grand slam didn't even score Boston's winning run: Manny's two-run homer in the first took the honors by striking what eventually became the fatal blow.

Psychologically, however, a grand slam is huge; a multi-faceted event that can momentum in an instant. Remember the grand slam Vlad Guerrero hit in the last game of the 2004 ALDS? That one hit recharted the course of the game, knocked the Sox off of their cruise control to series victory and gave the Legend of David Ortiz a huge boost. Another example: last fall's $14 millon grand slam, the most memorable moment of the American League playoffs. 50 years from now, mention the 2007 post-season and J.D. Drew's untimely hit will come to mind - and that hit was only a contributor to a non-clinching win. We love our grand slams: they encapsulate moments of sometimes surpreme tension, validating the risk of loading the bases without scoring runs, granting the sublime pleasure of big gifts in big packages. We hate it when the opposing team hits a grand slam: those same moments of tension reversed, hoping and praying that our pitcher can escape the jam with little or no damage. When the big hit comes and the runs score, it's a gut punch, creating what feels like an insurmountable lead out of nothing in course of a couple of seconds.

But most of all we love our grand slams for the instant hero status they grant the men who hit them. Legendary batsman or journeyman stick handler, these men not only accomplished the difficult feat of hitting a baseball several hundred feet out of the confines of a field, but did so with the added pressure of potential runs waiting for the chance to come home. Achieving the mental focus to ignore that pressure, focus on their task, and find the right mistake to drive up and away gifts these men with the halo of clutch hitting, makes them gods for a day. Not too bad for a guy who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Julio Lugo: out four to six weeks with a torn quadriceps. Note to Jed Lowrie: many a ballplayer has jumpstarted a career out of opportunities like this one.

Final Score: Boston Red Sox 6, Houston Astros 1

The positive for Dice-K: no runs and two hits in his second start back, which is like a 10,000 percent improvement over what he did last time. The negative: three walks, only four strikeouts, and a cap at 87 pitches, with a caveat: with a three run lead going into the fifth, you'd have to figure that Francona felt it was better to risk the lead over his pitcher's arm. Type of strategy I approve of, so I'm not going to complain. My fantasy team's pitching staff also approves.

What remains a bit odd to me is that there's no long relief; the Sox blew through the relief corps last night instead. Except for Okajima, everybody pitched well, so no harm done last night, but either there's a deal in the making for a long arm to absorb middle innings for nights like last night, or - here's my moment of inspiration for the week - the Sox are bucking conventional wisdom and keeping a higher quality set of arms on staff to spread around innings when necessary and give Francona more tools on a regular basis, when the team needs to put out a fire.

Here's why I think that idea makes sense: in addition to needing to sacrifice an arm in the bullpen to carry an extra bat on the bench as a substitute for Papi's injured arm, the Sox have a starting staff that averages a fraction of a percent under six innings, which means they're less likely to need long relievers. Instead, they need pitchers to make it through the seventh, eighth, and ninth, which means power arms that can get people out but generally can't last longer than an inning. As a result, stocking up on those types of pitchers - and I think we can agree that Hansen and Delcarmen qualify - makes more sense than having long relief on hand.

Final Score: Boston Red Sox 9, Baltimore Orioles 2

I was all set to call this a "new" Lester standard: Lester the escape artist no more, Johnny (I thought) pitches better when he's got a close lead to protect. However, I see the numbers disagree with me: Lester's about the same whether he's leading by one run or four. I guess you could say he let off the intensity a bit after Lowell hit his grand salami in the fifth, but can you blame him? The Orioles handed all of us four runs by choosing to give Manny an IBB to load the bases, forgetting all too readily that Mike Lowell is the Man Who Hits Doubles (and double doubles) and that the Green Monster is tailor made for his swing.

Speaking of tailor-made: J.D. Drew may have hit yet another home run (continuing to bury the "I have no intensity" statements that we've all ascribed to his character), but tonight was a breakout for Kevin Youkilis; after falling into a bit of a dry spell (before tonight, three for his last twenty with two walks), he went all twos tonight: two for two, two walks, two runs, and two RBI...and one big home run with that sweet swing into the Monster seats to tack on two more to the score.

One final observation: not to knock on the Orioles, but here's the difference between Boston and Baltimore this year, reduced to one set of plays: with two in the top of the fifth, Ramon Hernandez pops a foul along the first base line at a point midway between first and home. Youkilis and Cash both give their all trying to make the play, running full tilt and then sliding into each other (and into the wall) while trying to get a fix on the ball. It's a 1 to 0 game, and they know that every out counts and every pitch they can save their pitcher can make the difference, even if they get a little dirty. Neither player makes the play, but you can tell they're really trying, that they really care.

Contrast that with a pop foul to the backstop in the bottom of the previous inning, where Hernandez and Melvin Mora both charge in, lose sight of the ball, and end up giving up on an easy out, walking away with disgusted looks on their faces. Caring isn't quantifiable in a stat, so it's messy, but it's all too obvious which team - in June, with the season half over - cares about the game, and which one doesn't. Not surprisingly, the one that seems to care more is in first.