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This type of late season closeness is a new thing for me - in my baseball life the Sox have never won the AL East, and in truth, there has never even been a close race in the East involving the Sox in my ten years.

Given how tight the East and the Wild Card race are (the Oakland A's have just lost to the Rangers and are now 4 back with 7 to play, while the Indians loss today to the Royals today puts them 3 back in the loss column of the White Sox) people are beginning to consider just how many play-off scenarios exist - MLB.com presumably keeps this story in storage and just changes the team names as required. It does raise the interesting question - if your team were dragged into the three team Wild Card scenario, what would you want them to do? Given the Red Sox's home record this year, I guess the temptation would be to play the extra game with the home advantage reward... but that guarantees using an extra starter... thankfully, that scenario is unlikely this year, and I doubt Theo is phoning me to ask my opinion before he plays the home advantage card...

The Sox win today was the most relaxing win in a few days - always ahead, good situational hitting, Renteria looking better at the plate, Damon getting his first big hit in quite a while... and David Ortiz seeing 1 strike in the first 12 pitches that were thrown toward home plate while he was there - and that strike was so 'taken' that Ortiz could as well have been catching up on some bills that needed paying.

Back in my 100 game review I projected this Sox team out to 93 wins and concluded by saying that if 93 wins was enough to win the East it would get us to the play-offs, but wouldn't win the wild-card. I can stand by that, but add the rider, 93 wins isn't winning the AL East - if the Sox go 2-5 over the next 7 games, I am willing to guess that none of us will be using post-season tickets in Boston in 2005!