The Red Sox for the third straight year at the half way point have a 49-32 record; however, I think this year may be the best job yet for Theo and Tito. This team is not as stacked as the past teams and has suffered countless injuries to key players but Theo and Tito have managed to keep us in contention by finding a seemingly never ending collection of guys off of the scrap heap to come in and make valuable contributions. This is something the much maligned Dan Duquette always excelled at ;starting with the 95 team where he picked up Tim Wakefield off the waiver wire which helped us win the division and amazingly enough ended up being for the next 15 years. Duquette made a ton of other similar moves over the next few years finding guys seemingly out of nowhere who made both key contributions in a given year and in some cases had a long career in the majors:  Richard Jefferson (he killed righties, lefties not so much), Matt Stairs (professional hitter),Rich Garces (El Guapo) , Darren Bragg (one of the original dirt dogs; though we got him for Jamie Moyer whose career track mirrored Tim Wakefield), Troy O’Leary (huge in the 99 ALDS and averaged .280 20 80 with the Sox) , Dwayne Hosey and Lee Tinsley (both had some key hits in 95)

Damon Buford and Darren Lewis (key contributors on that 99 team) and Brian Daubach (replacement player who put of 4 years of remarkably consistent solid numbers for the Sox: look it up almost the same HR and RBI totals each year: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/daubabr01.shtml)

Well this 2010 team if full of guys like that that Theo has found and Tito assimilated into the regular line up due to injuries. Darnell McDonald and Daniel Nava came out of baseball purgatory to literally start smacking home runs the minute they stepped on in the batters box as a Red Sox for the first time. Scott Atchison has made some key spot starts and long relief fill ins due to day of game injuries to Dice-K and Buchholz. Bill Hall is not a nobody but a baseball veteran who has had some solid years, but he has played more than one would expect this year and put in yeoman’s work playing a variety of position including pitcher. Eric Patterson and Kevin Cash are the two most recent arrivals who have started filling in after the recent rash of injuries and in both cases they filled in well so far.