OAKLAND, Calif. -- They are 100 games into the schedule, four days from the trading deadline, and nine weeks from the end of the season.
A good day to take the temperature of your Boston Red Sox?
Not if you can't look beyond yesterday's dud, a 5-1 loss to the Oakland Athletics in which Frank Thomas demonstrated with two home runs off Kyle Snyder that while he may no longer qualify as the Big Hurt (the license plate on his black BMW still reads ``HRTIT"), he remains one dangerous dude.
But widen the angle of the camera lens a bit and you see a Red Sox team with the No. 2 winning percentage in baseball, trailing only Detroit, and one that hasn't had a better record through 100 games since 1979, when the Sox were 62-38.
Does this team need some tweaking? The general manager, Theo Epstein, is trying. He knows that any team is living on borrowed time when its rotation is forced to depend on waiver claims such as the oft-injured Snyder (2-2, 7.15 ERA) or an unheralded minor leaguer such as Kason Gabbard, who pitched creditably in his big league debut but after the game yesterday learned he was headed back to Triple A Pawtucket.
But the Sox are hardly alone in being shorthanded. Tuesday night, they beat up on an Oakland rookie making his second big league start, Jason Windsor, who after the game was sent back to the minors.
``There's still time for deals to materialize," Epstein said from Boston, where he remained while the club split six games on this West Coast trip to Seattle and Oakland, dropping two of three to the Mariners while winning two of three against the Athletics. ``But we're not close to anything right now."
Still, as the Sox return home this weekend to face the Angels, co-leaders of the American League West with the Athletics, they know that even if Epstein is unable to conjure up another arm for the rotation, David Wells is on the cusp of being activated, most likely for a start Monday night against the Cleveland Indians at Fenway Park.
``If he can come back and pitch like David Wells, the numbers speak for themselves," said Curt Schilling, who like teammate Josh Beckett collected win No. 13 during this visit to McAfee Coliseum, where yesterday's crowd of 35,077 could be called a sellout in a place that can easily hold 60,000 because the upper deck is covered with giant green tarps.
``That's huge, you know," Schilling said of Wells's impending return. ``We've got a bullpen that we're leaning on more than we probably want to. Our starters have to get us deeper into the game. If he's right, he's the guy who can do that."
Snyder, for one, has shown the tendency to hit the wall in the fifth. Of the 15 runs he has allowed in four starts for the Sox, 10 have come in the fifth inning.
