Red Sox Magic Number - 22

With Clay Buchholz's masterpiece no-hit performance yesterday - the Red Sox magic number is now 22.

There's not much to add about Buchholz's no-no that you haven't already read or heard. Gordon Edes does a good job summing everything up here. The only thing I'll pass along is an observation the bartender where I watched the game kept mentioning - Clay Buchholz does look a lot like Hillary Swank.

Roger Clemens wears the number 22 and I should have given kudos to the Rocket and the other Yankee starters for their fine performances in the last series where they took all three games from the Red Sox. It is something to take with a grain of salt, however. They Yankees play better at home but the only way they will be making the playoffs is as the wildcard. That means that their opponent will have home field advantage. The Yankees have a losing record on the road (31-35) and Chien-Ming Wang's ERA is about 2 runs higher on the road and Roger Clemens's is more than 3 runs higher on the road. Only Andy Pettitte of the three potential playoff starters has a better road ERA than home ERA (which makes sense since Yankee Stadium isn't friendly to lefty pitchers). The Yankees with their offense isn't a team you want to face in the playoffs but then again - what team that is good enough to make the playoffs is a team you want to face?

In New England - the number 22 immediately brings to mind Doug Flutie. Boston College looked good yesterday and I'll post something about the day in college football a little later.

I didn't have a chance to post yesterday when the magic number was 23. What I was going to mention is that the letter "W" is the 23rd letter in the alphabet and interestingly enough - the letter has 2 points pointing down and 3 points pointing up. That's just like the Red Sox.

The 2 pionts down for the Red Sox are the recent injury bug that has hit the team (Manny, Wakefield, Drew, Kielty, etc.) and the inconsistency of the offense (which is exacerbated when Manny or Ortiz is out of the line-up). The three points up for the Red Sox are (A) the starting pitching - I still say the Red Sox have the best rotation in baseball and now they add Buchholz to the mix (B) the bullpen - even with Gagne's early troubles with the Red Sox - it s still a very formidable bullpen and (C) team depth - with the exception of a lack of power - the team is two deep at each position. The positives far outweigh the negatives which again brings us to the letter "W". In baseball "W" stands for wins and no team in baseball has more wins than the Red Sox.