Five for Friday

1) Wow, huge win for the C's last night. Back to back road wins in New Orleans and Dallas is pretty big time and one of the toughest two-game stretches of their schedule they just aced.

Kind of funny, but you realize that they only have 27 games left to play in the regular season right? Seems crazy doesn't it. As they sit now at 44-11, I really think in order to lock down the top seed in the East they need to win 67 games. Nuts, but true the way Cleveland looks. That means they must close the year at 23-4 clip. Hard? Yes. Doable? Of course. This is a team that started 27-2, has won 19 in a row, 12, in a row, and is in the midst of an 8 game road winning streak. Yes they still have to play at Utah, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Denver - all VERY tough road tests out west - but beyond that their schedule is relatively favorable. If they can split those games or even take 3 of four, they will be in great shape moving forward. The biggest of the biggies is still the April game at Cleveland but if we can just hope for 67 wins, I think we will be all good. Of course everybody thought 11 would be the Pats magic number and that did not exactly work out. At least here though we are talking about a 2 seed worst case scenario and not missing the playoffs all together.

2) You have to read Keith Law's take on the Nats signing of Adam Dunn from his espn.com blog. It is almost laugh out loud funny and sums up the Nationals in a nutshell. As for the other end of the spectrum, check out Rick Snider's take. He is a longtime DC area sportswriter who clearly must be on the Lerners payroll. He really thinks that people are going to show up in August to watch a team 15 games out of first place on the off chance that Adam Dunn will hit a home run or two as opposed to a mighty 0-4 with 4 Ks? I'm not sure about that. Hold on one second while I grab that red challenge flag out of my sock to throw at Snider.

3) Here would be my perfect world breakdown - and what I really think will need to happen for them to win their division - of number of starts by each group of Red Sox starters for the season:

Beckett/Lester/Dice-K - 96 (32 a person)

Wakefield/Bucholz/Bowdin - 36

Brad Penny/John Smoltz - 30 starts

It is kind of aggressive, but you know the Sox are probably banking on something like this from their rotation. Obviously you hope the Penny/Smoltz number there is on the low end and the Wake/Buch/Bowdin is on the high end, but if you want to think realistically, above is what you have to go for.

4) I don't mean to pump myself up or anything but I do mean to pump up RBB when I say that for the second time this winter, an idea posted by RBB (well, me) is starting to gain some steam in local and national media. First, I lead the charge on why the Sox should look at signing Bobby Abreu and now it appears that I was way out in front in putting forth the idea/prediction that Richard Seymour would be cut by the Patriots. Again, this serves as notice not that I am smarter than everybody else but rather that RBB puts out content that really is original and sometimes off the standard path but also logical. We don't need to echo what all the other Boston media hounds are screaming about and we don't try to do that either.

5) I worry about the Celtics in the longrun mainly because they have absolutely no tradeable commodities and they need to improve. Really the only way they will be able to add a meaningful player to their team would be to re-drag PJ Brown out of retirement or hope for a buyout of Stephon Marbury or maybe Joe Smith. I played with espn.com's Trade Machine a few weeks ago and figured out that the Celtics could acquire Joe Smith for Brian Scalabrine and Tony Allen, but why on earth would Oklahoma City do that? Sure, Smith serves no purpose to them but at least his salary is off the books at the end of the year. Scalabrine and Tony Allen on the other hand would be tied to for a few years moving forward and why would they want that?