It is what it is.

However frustrating these past playoff games have been, I have found it very difficult to be too upset when the final outs have been tallied. The fact of the matter is none of this should be terribly suprising to anyone that watched this team all year. This team is this good, for better or for worse.

Maybe this is just what life is like in the post-2004 era, but I'm not tearing my hair out about these losses. Its not like we've been robbed or had our hearts ripped out of our chests by a backbreaking moment yet. The team put up a ton of runs at Fenway in both games played there, as they have done all year, then the bats went quiet against two pitchers they probably should have hammered, as they have done in stretches all year. David Ortiz can look locked in one minute and completely feeble the next, as he has done all year. I keep rooting for J.D. Drew to make that one huge game-changing hit, and he never does, just like he has done all year.

Its not like the team has showed up in Cleveland and laid an egg. Does anyone think this team is vastly underperforming? Our 2, 3, and 4 starters couldn't get out of the fifth inning, but remember that Tito is running with a much shorter hook in the postseason than he would during a regular summer contest. We had every chance to win Game 2, had little chance to win Game 3, and watched an impressive Tim Wakefield performance get wiped off the board as he was dinked and dunked to death in Game 4.

They are who they have been all year, and it is for that reason that I am against "shaking up" the lineup. You remember they were frustrating all year, but you also should remember that frustration was accompanied by the best record in Major Leagcue Baseball. As the old saying goes, you have to dance with the girl that brought you; this team got this far with this lineup, and to break from that now is, in my opinion, reactionary and short-sighted.

So the Sox have at least one more game to play, with elimination staring them full in the face. Being down 3 games to 1 against a team as good as Cleveland is not the best place in the world to be. But at times like this, remember what Kevin Millar said when the '04 Sox were down 3-0 to a great Yankees team.

"Don't let us win tonight...This is a big game. They've got to win it because if we win we've got Pedro coming back tomorrow and then Schilling will pitch Game 6 and then you can take that fraud stuff and put it to bed. Don't let the Sox win this game."

Well, the Sox already have one win in this series. We have Beckett coming back tomorrow. We've got Schilling in Game 6. After that...who knows.