Sox season so far - the 100 game edition

Well I had thought I would hold off and use the 100 game review to talk about the moves the Sox made at the non-waiver deadline, but given the hectic 'pace' of rumors it seems to make sense to separate them out.

The last 20 games saw the team go a less than overwhelming 9-11, interrupted by the American League retaining home-field advantage for the Sox in this year's World Series... The 20 games didn't see anything different from the last 80 - when the Sox get decent pitching, they are more than likely to win. On the season (including tonight's game), the Sox have held their opponents to 3 runs or less in 44 games - and have won a staggering 41 of those.

Since the 80 game report, the Schilling as closer experiment has begun and the results have been ok, but not so good that we should be encouraging Curt to give up the proper day job permanently. It is difficult to know at this stage whether starting would exaggerate the problems that he is having - that is, 6 innings at a 1.5 WHIP with the resultant runs scored - or whether the fact that all we are seeing is one inning at a time is exaggerating the issue as hitters are forced into aggressiveness given the stage of the game?

As I was looking through my worksheets for this post one thing stood out:

	W - L	%	Remaining
AL East	22 - 26	0.458	26
AL Central	11 - 5	0.688	19
AL West	13 - 8	0.619	14
Interleague	12 - 6	0.667	0

We are really toiling against the AL East... well no, we are really toiling against the Blue Jays (3-8 on the season, 7 games to go) and also against the Orioles (5-7 on the season, 6 to go). Looking ahead though, if we keep up the exact same pace (again this is including the effect of tonight's game), the Sox project to a 93-69 record - two caveats to that - it needs the Sox to maintain their 1.00 record against the Twins (unlikely) and to win 4 of 6 from the Royals, who they have yet to play (likely, unless the Royals appoint a new manager just before the series starting on Tuesday).

Are 93 wins good enough to get to the play-offs? I guess the fence sitting answer is... it might be. If it is good enough to win the AL East then it will be good enough to make the play-offs, but I doubt it will be good enough for the wild card.