My thoughts on the Red Sox as of mid-January:

Front office: Totally fine. Everything's under control.

Pitching: Really good. Fine and dandy.

Hitting: Manny and Ortiz plus any seven other dudes plus our pitching equals 90 win team. Fine.

So there you have it. My point is, there are a few holes, they will be filled, and none of them involve pitching. There are question marks in terms of Schilling and Foulke, but overall, I'm just not worried. If I start to worry, I'll let you know. I definitely want to get to March before making any final judgments.

You might give me a whole bunch of stats that show how guys are going to start doing bad. That brings me to my next topic.

I love stats. I love the concept. It's one of the reasons why baseball is the best game. I could pore over one box score for a year. But I'm not a big fan of projections. Granted, that's partially the point of keeping statistics. To me, though, stats are all about the past. Which is good. I'm down with the past. That's why I have hundreds of video tapes, basically documenting my entire life. That's why I write, too.

But projections just don't mean anything to me. You can tell me that Papelbon's projected Total Earned Run Ratio Indicator Before Last Earned Jug Of Brandy rating is a perfect 1.000, compared to Hansen's .004, but the games will still be played, and I'll still watch them. And I can hope against hope, when necessary, that the unthinkable happens, and sometimes it does.

It's almost like people are trying to figure out what happens before the games are played. I don't understand why you wouldn't want to watch and see what happens, without having to know ahead of time. It's almost like stats are being invented like they're new products. On-base percentage was like the erasable pen. When I first heard of it, it was revolutionary to me. And now I'm stuck holding it while everyone else has their iPods and DWARF ratings or whatever. But I seem to be fine with it, only occasionally and selectively joining modern times.

A-Rod could slip on horse dung in July and break his coccyx. Posada could get a sex-change operation and quit baseball after this season, choosing to run a hair salon instead. You can't project this stuff! (Although if either of these things happen, remember, you heard it here first.)

I'd like to know how often projections come true. That's the stat I want. Some kind of projection accuracy monitor. Don't tell me, they already have it, right?

All I'm saying is, none of these stats factor in the "how hard is Jere rooting for the guy in a key spot?/is he tapping his leg at the right speed to make the guy get a hit?" quotient. To me, that's where the fun is.

Jim Rice didn't make the Hall again. Maybe in some future year.

One more thing: I don't think I ever actually acknowledged the fact that the White Sox won the World Series. Probably because it was the most anti-climactic drought-breaking of all time. Sorry, guys.