The Sox proved me wrong.  The team I saw in September certainly wasn't the same team that destroyed the Rockies.  I mistakenly took their play of last season and most of this as indicative.  My mistake.

They make for a very boring 162 game regular season, but there's no denying they are talent laden.

wins in the season due to lackadaisical play.  Their pitching was sometimes suspect.  Lazy play - yes Ramirez comes to mind - allowed the Yanks to take a run.  You're not going to escape the team salary fact.  The team should have dominated during the season.  I suspect Red Sox fans are blind to the sense of entitlement that the Sox players often played with to their detriment.

But the bottom line is they were a different team in the playoffs, proving conclusively they were, for the most part lazing around during the season.

Joe Buck was on Bob Costas's radio show this weekend, and expressed the opinion that the MLB regular season is too long.   Over a 162 game season, it is inevitable that any team will go through the doldums occasionally.  Only a few great teams (th 1998 Yankees, 2001 Mariners, maybe the 2004 Cardinals) avoid it.

We might not like it.  People are paying good money to watch these games; the teams should exert maximum effort.  But their job is to win a championship.  Going all out in a mid-August game against the Devil Rays may be the right thing to do from the fan's point of view who saved up his money to come to one game during the year, but it is not necessarily aligned with winning a championship, which is their goal.

So, the Sox's lapses during the regular season don't prevent them from being worthy champions, but it would stop them from being considered an all-time great team.  A team like the Patriots this year are chasing something beyond a championship, and are a must-watch every week because of it.