Tigers have it. Rockies have it. Red Sox don’t. Simple as that. Drew, Dice-K, Lugo, and even Crisp are all cruising along on auto-pilot. Most of the starting rotation can’t get out of the 5th inning. Timlin is doing ok, but he can’t be the only middle relief guy. That leaves Francona with Wavy Lopez, Manny Del Carwreck, or Eric Gag-me. Was this whole season a fluke? Were they just lucky enough to play really bad teams at just the right time? I thought sure in the last two weeks of the season that they’d fall out of the division lead, but the Yankmees choked and let them slip away. Now they’re up against a well-rounded team with dependable, if not spectacular, pitching and hitting. Manny the Show-off and Big Papi are doing their best, but when most of your lineup is batting like old ladies, it’s like bailing out your sinking ship with a spoon. I believe Beckett will be good enough to hold the Indians to a couple runs at best, but if the Sox can’t bring anyone home, it won’t do any good. And the thought of a Game 7 at Fenway in the hands of Dice-K is too painful to think about. It’ll be like watching Bill Buckner replays for three hours. If the Indians are destined to win the pennant, I hope they do it tomorrow night in front of their own fans. Their fans deserve that.

 EDIT: Case in point, from Shaughnessy’s column in The Boston Globe:

Ramírez was not in the Sox dugout when Mike Lowell and Drew made the first outs against Cleveland reliever Rafael Betancourt in the ninth. He came back from whatever he was doing to watch Crisp line to first for the final out.

Yesterday in a rare interview, Ramírez said, “If it doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world or something.”

That should fire everybody up.