It has been exactly 5 years since the curse was broken. The Red Sox were something to watch that year. We had seen almost everything in the years up to that point. Finally the stars aligned and put our team in the Series finally. But it wasn’t easy. The team came back from a 3-0 deficit against the Yankees. A big steal was the winner in the game in that series that stopped the Yankees’ tide. The Cardinals were the unhappy losers in the World Series that year, but they were gracious and figured that Boston was due. The management even let the New England fans on the street enter the stadium after the 8th inning so that they could see their team win. People congratulated them afterwards in a very kind way. Where were you? I know where I was but I haven’t heard that many other fans tell about it.

The postseason ended pretty fast for us this year. And the question rises from Cambridge to Braintree to Boston Harbor: what happened to make the playoffs end so quickly. A very sad year for us indeed. Yes, Mr. Papelbon didn’t pitch his best, but by then it was almost too late. He certainly realized the real problem: the able pitching wasn’t getting any kind of offensive support! It’s like we didn’t have batters and our guys just stood their with batting helmets on. They would swing their arms as though they were swinging a bat, but there wasn’t any bat there. What a joke that was. Hopefully we’ll be able to see the team catch up to the way that we’ve expected them to bat all this time and not just evaporate like they did this October.

Clay Buchholz was our pitcher in Game 3 of the Divisional Series that we lost last week. Now don’t boo him away just yet. Remember, he left with a 5-1 lead in the 6th inning and would have had the win, but the bullpen game up some uncharacteristic runs during the game. For a guy who was sent to the Fall League last season in order to gain confidence and just stay in his pitching groove, his first playoffs appearance was very good and better than the team would have anticipated just a few months before. Over the course of this year, he has surprised us several times and he’s gotten very good at pitching in tough games. He’s less nervous in the innings after the first, so he can keep his control and hopefully he will be able to stick around longer now.

With the Red Sox trying to get themselves back in order for next season, they will be looking to a few particular positions that are going to need a little boost. It’s going to be one of those long offseasons with possibly some big moves being made. The team knows they missed out on some good players last offseason and it might have caused their early exit during the playoffs. Teixeira is gone for good, it would seem, but there are some other possibilities out there. For one, if they wanted an outfielder, I happen to have read that Milton Bradley is available. But they seem to most need a shortstop, at least according to several commentators today. Their two shortstops this year ended up needing surgery early in the season. So we’ll be watching to see if they can bring in some new talent this year.

The Red Sox’ early exit from the playoffs was a big blow for the city of Boston and her baseball fans. That’s obvious, but what was most disappointing was how they just couldn’t force it into further games. The team is talented, that’s for sure, and they could do better. But getting swept by the Angels is, for this city, just as good as being the Nationals. The players didn’t play well, but there are deeper flaws to this team. The main one is that the management thinks that they have assembled the constellation of players that can win the World Series, but that the players underperformed from the expectations that they had. This isn’t quite true, because they missed some major signings in the last offseason. People like Teixeira went to the Yankees and has been punishing the Red Sox all year. They will have to look around and see if they can’t get some big hitting players to fill up that gap. They have a lot of the talent they need but they will need to fill a couple of major holes in their roster to compete strongly next year.

Yesterday’s Game 1 was kind of excruciating, I have to admit it. We were looking for the Red Sox to start out the postseason well. But where has all the offense gone? It was expected that at least one run would be possible from this team, but it hasn’t happened yet. They lost 5-0. This was a long evening for our team. Hopefully we’ll be able to get those bats moving, but the Angels are a tough team. They’ve been strong in an unexpectedly strong division this year. Now that they’ve shut out the Red Sox, it’ll be even more interesting to see what happens in the next few games. The Sox are in a little hole, but it’s not as bad as it could be, since it was only the first game. Now we’ll get the real pitchers into the game, since Lester wasn’t able to get it quite right. We know their offense and their pitching can’t be as good next time.

Once we start the playoffs, we’ll get to see the Red Sox taking on one of the MLB’s best teams this year. The LA Angels of Anaheim, despite the weird name, are a team that yo-yos every year. It seems like they are at the bottom of the standings one year and winning the pennant the next. Just a few years ago they won the World Series. But the Red Sox have won the Series even more than recently. But either way, 2009 is a new year. The Angels have some big strengths this year. But the Red Sox have their own. Yes, there are questions about our bullpen and our pitching in general. A lot of the fielding questions that we had asked a month or two back seem to have faded quite a bit. So there are a lot of tough things in the playoffs, but the Red Sox will put up a big fight, no question about it. Hopefully they can progress to the ALCS against the Yankees or Tigers/Twins.

Start next week, we will see our Red Sox in the playoffs. This will be a lot of fun to see, since they got dropped early last season. Hopefully it will be about to happen for the first time in awhile. When we have our team in the playoffs, it makes that October darkness much easier to stomach! When it comes down to it, can they beat the Angels? What about the Tigers or the Yankees? They have shown themselves to be generally consistent. They are good but they haven’t been able to get a longer win streak all that much this year. The second half of the year, however, was better than the beginning had been. Next week, it’s only a few days away before we know it for sure!