While a defending World Series Champ is expected to be in the playoffs, the Sox overcame a lot to get into the post-season. You had lots of key players who spent some time (and in some cases a lot of time) on the D.L. (Ortiz, Lowell, Beckett, Dice-K, Wakefield, Casey, et. al.) Then we had the whole Manny saga and trade. We started the year with the odd schedule in Japan and then all around the country before we even played at Fenway. We had to play in o the best divisions in baseball in terms of overall records for the teams. Curt Schilling in his possible last year ended up just being the highest payed blogger in the world. Despite all that, they made the playoffs pretty easily and I predict when it is all said and done, we will have the division as well.