[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

This is it. 8.5 games behind, 3 games against the division leader over the weekend, and the best chance to climb back into the race in the balance. Fortunately, the pitching matchups are highly favorable.

Schilling should beat Lieber. Arroyo, who is significantly better than his 3-7 would indicate, ought to beat the journeyman Sturtze. Note the insane 55:41 run:earned run ratio that Arroyo labors under. Go, Red Sox defense! Lowe vs. Contreras... well, that'll be entertaining. I'm predicting an 8-7 game. In the third inning.

Mind you, Derek Lowe has an 87:66 run:earned run ratio. Yeesh. OK, I fired up the spreadsheet; read the extended cut for the bottom 15 R:ER ratios for pitchers who've gone over 20 innings. Hint: Red Sox pitchers are well represented, particularly if you filter for larger sample sizes. As much as Lowe was helped by great run production last year, he's been hurt by lousy defense this year. The real Lowe underneath all the effects of the players around him is still not that good, though.

Anyhow, the point of all this before I got distracted by the lousy Red Sox defense was that I would like to believe that this is the point at which I stop expecting the Sox to do anything this year. That'll fall by the wayside if they make it to the playoffs, but I'd like to believe it right now. If they don't sweep the Yankees this weekend -- and they need to sweep -- then I think they should trade Nomar for prospects; they should sluff Lowe off; and they should think long and hard about Varitek: if they aren't gonna win this year, and he wants a long-term contract, and they expect Shoppach to be ready the year after next, then they should trade Varitek and rent someone passable for next year to hold down the fort until Shoppach is ready. I wouldn't feel that way if Varitek was represented by anyone but Scott Boras, but he is and I do.

(Dig those extended sentences? I can reel 'em off all week.)

This obsession with always contending gets in the way of building a perennial contender; it may at this juncture be necessary to take a step back. There are a huge number of teams who still think they have a chance and there are not a lot of great players on the market. If the Sox' chances are poor this year, and they are, and if they can improve their chances in future years at the cost of whatever remaining chance they have this year... they should make trades. Screw the fellowship of the miserable.

More...

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Everyone's seen the Kerry/Bush flash funny, but my mother hasn't, and while my response time is not as good as Google I give more personalized search results. So there it is.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Some time ago:

For some odd reason I'm not really comfortable posting long ranty things to my LiveJournal. There's something weird going on in my head there. I think it's because I have this constant awareness that I'm dropping an acrid pissed off political rant in the middle of a couple of dozen nice peaceful friends pages, between a perfectly harmless quiz answer and a thoughtful introspective discussion of someone’s day. "If I were a Sluggy Freelance character, I would be -- holy shit, what the hell got up his ass?" That sort of thing. Also I keep finding myself self-conscious about profanity, cause I know some of my readers aren't fond of the stuff.

Yeah, still pretty much the case.

A little less than a year ago -- August 27th, 2003 -- I got the anniversary completely wrong. I still make dumb mistakes, too.

Thanks for visiting, anyhow. I promise to keep writing whenever I have something interesting to say.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

It's followup time!

a) The White House found those missing Bush military records, which contain no useful information.

b) Sandy Berger resigned. Thomas Kean, the Republican who chairs the 9/11 Commission, says they got copies of all the documents Berger removed anyhow.

c) The air marshals on board Northwest Airlines flight #327 were worried that Annie Jacobsen was in danger of panicking and creating a dangerous situation. Quoting at length, cause it's too good to miss: "The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen's actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves." Nice. In related news, the myth that you can't question more than two Arabs per flight? It's a myth.