The Red Sox first three months of the 2013 season have been quite memorable and there's no doubting that this is a much more enjoyable squad to watch than the dysfunctional 2012 edition. However with a few exceptions, the team's stats on the morning of July 1, 2013 looked strikingly similar to those the Red Sox had on the corresponding sunrise exactly one year ago.

The current standings show that the Red Sox are in first place in the AL East with the best record in the entire American League. This marks the first time since 2009 that Boston has opened July in the division lead.

But for all of the gains on the basepaths (Jacoby Ellsbury has matched the team's first three-months of 2012 total by himself) and in the starting rotation (significant drop in starters ERA), last year's squad was much stronger out of the bullpen (more converted saves and nearly a full run lower in ERA) and actually had more power in the lineup than the current unit (a 19% decrease in home runs per game).

The 2013 pitching staff strikes out more batters than 2012, but also has walked the most batters in the majors (on the second highest rate of walks per nine innings in '13, fifth best in the AL over the same span of 2012).

So while it seems that this team is so much better than last year's, for the most part, the numbers aren't vastly different. The attitude, hustle and intangibles in John Farrell's first three months on the job are another story altogether.

Here's a head-to-head statistical look at the 2012 and 2013 squads entering July.

At one point during last night’s broadcast of the NBA Draft, ESPN’s Bill Simmons said that watching Kentucky center (and Everett, MA’s own) Nerlens Noel drop out of the Top 5 was one of the most stunning things he had ever witnessed in the NBA Draft. For me, however, the most stunning drop both at the time it occurred and still today was seeing someone else currently making headlines, Paul Pierce, drop all the way to Rick Pitino and the Celtics in the 1998 draft. Marginal players like Michael Olowokandi, Raef LaFrentz (Pierce’s Kansas teammate), Robert Traylor, Jason Williams and Larry Hughes all came off the board while someone who at the time was widely considered the best player in the class waited to hear his name called. But thankfully for the Celtics’ faithful, nearly a third of the league blundered that night, giving Boston a player for the ages at selection no. 10.

Word broke yesterday that on or about July 10, Pierce will traded to the Brooklyn Nets along with Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry for draft picks and a cacophony of Brooklyn's extras. Garnett’s passion and attitude will surely be missed in these parts, but for all of his contributions, he’ll always be remembered first as a Timberwolf. In this deal, the loss of historic proportions for Boston is Pierce. He’s not the first Celtics legend to be traded as Dave Cowens, Jo Jo White and even the 41-year old and coming-out-of-retirement Bob Cousy all were peddled away off before him, but Pierce’s pending departure marks the first time the current face of the franchise is being dealt.

Take a look at the Celtics record book and you’ll see Paul Pierce everywhere, standing shoulder to shoulder with (and in some instances, ahead of) Celtic Green giants. Here's where he ranks in most of the major statistical categories in Boston's storied history:

• Games: John Havlicek (1,270), Robert Parish (1,106), Paul Pierce (1,102)
• Points: Havlicek (26,395), Pierce (24,021)
• Career Scoring Average: Larry Bird (24.3), Pierce (21.8)
• True Shooting Percentage (min 10K points): McHale (.605), Parish (.587), Pierce (.561)
• 3 Pointers: Pierce (1,823)
• Free Throws: Pierce (6,434)
• Assists: Cousy (6,945), Havlicek (6,114), Bird (5,695), Pierce (4,305)
• Blocks (since 1973): Parish (1,703), Kevin McHale (1,690), Bird (755), Pierce (668)
• Steals: Pierce (1,583)

Pierce also owns three of the top 10 scoring seasons in franchise history, six of the top 8 in made free throws, and six of the top 7 in usage percentage which takes into account the percentage of a team’s plays that a player was on the court, and calculated just for the players from the Larry Bird era on. Only Bird (11) averaged 20 or more points in more seasons than Pierce (8, tied with Havlicek) and Pierce is the only Celtic to score 50 points in a game since Bird in 1989.

Looking back on his the league-wide impact, Pierce wasn’t purely a Celtics phenomenon, he's a 10-time All Star, Finals MVP, and four-time member of an All NBA team. With hindsight being 20-20 he’s clearly one of the top two players taken in that 1998 draft, along with the eighth pick, Dirk Nowitzki. In fact, since the day Pierce was drafted only Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant have scored more regular season NBA points, a testament to his tenure of excellence as Celtic and an NBA superstar.

On more piece of truth about The Truth: Once his playing days are done, Pierce's 34 will be proudly displayed with numbers of Russell, Cousy, Bird and the rest of Boston's basketball legends in the Garden's rafters. He certainly earned his spot.

Having already lost Doc Rivers to the Clippers and with the futures of franchise cornerstones Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett very much in question, the Celtics enter tonight's NBA Draft at a crossroads. Barring any late transactions, Danny Ainge will be picking in the unenviable 16th slot, a position that has failed to produce an NBA superstar in nearly three decades since the Jazz took Hall of Fame point guard John Stockton from Gonzaga in 1984. During that time there have been some other quality NBA players selected 16th (Ron Artest, Tony Delk, Hedo Turkoglu) but those men fall under the heading of complementary players, not the face-of-the-franchise player Boston currently needs.

That got me to thinking, with so many great players to suit up in the green and white over the years, who were the best Boston has selected in the entry draft? To do so, I looked to basketball-reference.com’s Win shares rating, which evaluates players based on their contributions to wins, over the expected contributions of any other average player. The stat admittedly has some flaws, as many individual statistics used in it were not kept in the earlier years of the league, necessitating estimates for many players, but from the standpoint of comparing players from different eras, it does a decent job. Taking role of the 442 men the Celtics drafted since 1947, we were able to determine the alltime top 10 players picked. To say the results were unexpected would be a major understatement.

Let’s start off with the aforementioned Billups who amazingly places as the fourth best Celtics pick in terms of career NBA WS. In fact, he ranks 36th alltime in the NBA according to the metric. The leader of the Pistons 2004 title team and Finals MVP that season earned the nickname Mr. Big Shot by repeatedly burying clutch shots throughout his career, was taken third overall by Rick Pitino in 1997. Just 51 games into his rookie year however Billups shipped to the Raptors as part of a package for Kenny Anderson, Popeye Jones and Zan Tabak. Billups along with—Antoine Walker ('96), Paul Pierce ('98) and Joe Johnson ('01)—is just one of four All Star players drafted by Boston over the past 25 years.

The greatest Celtic of them all, Bill Russell, wasn’t eligible for the list because he was taken out of the University of San Francisco, not by the Celtics but by the St. Louis Hawks. What was surprising from the list however is one of the two men Boston traded for him, guard Cliff Hagan, made the list as the no. 9 Celtic pick of alltime. Hagan, a 6’4” two-time All America guard from Kentucky was selected in the third round by Boston in 1953 but returned to play for the Wildcats in 1954 (leading them to an undefeated 25-0 season). He then served two years in the military, playing basketball at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland with the Celtics holding his rights the entire time. When St. Louis wouldn’t only accept Ed Macauley in exchange for Russell’s draft rights, Boston sweetened the deal by adding Hagan who went onto become a five-time NBA All Star.

And while seeing Larry Bird atop the list comes as no surprise to anyone, it is of note that with all of the Hall of Famers that played on the parque, it’s current captain Paul Pierce who contributed the second most win shares to the storied franchise. Pierce currently ranks in the top 4 in virtually every significant statistical category for the celtics and ranks second to John Havlicek in total points and second to Larry Bird in points per game.

And that leads us back to Danny Ainge, the man who’ll be at the helm for tonight’s draft charged with rebuilding the storied franchise that took him from BYU with the eighth pick of the second round in 1981. One of the NBA’s first three-point marksmen, Ainge ranks 10th in WS among players the C’s ever drafted.

Here are the top 10 NBA careers from players drafted by the Celtics according to basketball-reference.com’s career Win Shares (Note: Heinsohn was a territorial pick)

The Red Sox kicked off off a nine-game homestand with an impressive offensive outburst against the Rockies, racking up 11 runs and a season-high 20 hits in an 11-4 win. The explosion raised their major league-leading runs total to 505, an average of 5.13 runs per game, also tops in the bigs. The game was a microcosm of a new-look to this offense: Although they didn’t hit a home run, they managed to manufacture runs using speed. Ladies and gentlemen, the 2013 Red Sox are the American League’s most aggressive team on the basepaths.

Boston leads the league with 20 triples, the 20th coming in the fourth inning on Stephen Drew’s fourth of the season. By contrast, that’s already four more triples as a team than last season’s squad managed in 162 games in setting a new low water mark in Red Sox history. The last time that the Sox paced the league in three-baggers was 1972 when 17 different batters had at least one, paced by the “speedy” Carlton Fisk whose nine tied Oakland’s Joe Rudi for tops in the AL. In more than 11 decades they’ve led the AL in triples just eight times total (1903, ‘04, ‘08, ‘13, ‘14, ‘34, ‘40, ‘72), under three names (the Americans, Pilgrims and Red Sox)

These Sox also steal bases. Shane Victorino and Dustin Pedroia each successfully stole against Rox catcher Willin Rosario, adding to Boston’s AL-high total of 62 (32 of which have been contributed by AL-leader Jacoby Ellsbury). That’s nearly two-thirds of the way to last season’s team total of 97 swipes from Bobby Valentine’s team, and already more than Boston managed to steal in 48 other entire seasons. Incredibly, since 1901 when the AL was founded, the Red Sox have led the league in stolen bases exactly once, in 1935, when Billy Werber (29) and Mel Almada (20) stole more than half of the team’s 91 bags.

The victory over Colorado also marked the 11th time this season that the Red Sox both tripled and stole a base in a game, the most such games in the majors this season, and something they did just seven times all of last season. And while offensive stats are nice in themselves, what’s even better is that the team is turning that aggressiveness on the basepaths into winning, going 8-3 when both of those things happen. Since 1976 when the Mariners and Blue Jays entered the AL, only five teams have led the AL in both triples and stolen bases, the 1979, 1980, and 2002 Royals, the 1984 Blue Jays and 1986 Indians.

Last but not least, John Farrell’s team takes the extra base. Among the AL’s top eight players who have scored the most runs from second base on a single, three—Daniel Nava (10), Shane Victorino (10) and Mike Napoli (!, 9)‚—are Red Sox. While that might not seem like a lot, it is when you realize that only three Red Sox—Dustin Pedroia (17), Mike Aviles (12) and Nava (9)— managed to score as many as nine such runs all of last season, a vivid indicator of the differences between a team in first place and a team in last.

The Bruins road to the Stanley Cup took a critical turn on Saturday night when the Blackhawks captured Game 5 of the Finals by the score of 3-1, bringing the series back to the Hub with Boston on the brink of elimination. But before you despair, these Bruins seem to play their best when they’re faced with the prospect of an unfulfilled season.

Monday night’s tilt will mark the second time this postseason that the B’s find themselves in a win-or-go-home situation, the first coming in the stunning come-from-three-down-in-the-third-period overtime win in Game 7 against the Maple Leafs at TD Garden. However even before that massive comeback for the ages, Claude Julien’s group was no stranger to playing with their backs against the wall.

Starting in 2008, Julien’s first season guiding the Black and Gold, his teams have faced elimination 14 times. They’re an incredible 10-4 in those games, including two series —in 2008 versus Montreal and 2009 vs. Carolina — where they were down 3-1 and forced a Game 7 (although they lost in both instances).

In the last seven backs-to-the-wall games the playoff tested-squad has gone 6-1, with the only loss coming in last season’s opening round loss to the Capitals. That’s the best elimination game record of any team in the NHL over the past three playoffs and tied with their current nemesis, Chicago, for the most "must wins" during that period. In other playoff games Boston has gone just 27-19, for a winning percentage of .587. Obviously urgency counts.

Here's another reason to believe in the Bruins chances of extending Chicago to Game 7: When down three-games-to-two in a series, Julien’s B’s have not lost a Game 6, beating the Canadiens, Hurricanes, Capitals and Canucks. While all but the Canucks series ended with a Game 7 loss, the Julien Bruins have been solid overall in Game 7’s, splitting evenly the eight they’ve played since 2008.

Here are the teams with the most wins since 2011 while facing their postseason mortality:

Prior to Game 4 of the Finals Tuukka Rask’s 2013 Stanley Cup Playoff performance was being compared by many to Tim Thomas’ incredible 2011 run through the postseason. Although Rask hasn’t been as spectacular as Thomas was in leading the Bruins to the Cup two years ago, his numbers hold up well against Thomas, even following the Game 4 overtime loss to the Blackhawks in which he gave up a career-playoff-high six goals. Here’s a comparison along with some stats of note about the Bruins backstop off night.

The Rays pull into Fenway today for a three-games-in-two-days series against the Red Sox for the latest chapter in one of baseball’s most heated rivalries. When these teams met last week in St. Petersburg the benches cleared after John Lackey drilled Matt Joyce in the back with a pitch, coming on the heels of an earlier incident when Joyce stared at a long foul ball as if it were a home run, irking Lackey and the Red Sox. That was just the latest incident of acrimony between teams with a long history of aiming at each other.

These division rivals have made a habit of impromptu congregations on the field since the then-Devil Rays entered the AL in 1998, mainly due to batters getting hit by pitches. If it seems like these teams have targeted each other constantly with the baseball, they have. Starting that first year for baseball in Tampa Bay, there have been 250 hit batsmen in the 268 meetings in the lifetime series, with Red Sox batters plunked 127 times and Rays hitters feeling the sting another 123. The only matchup in baseball with more hit-batters over that span is the granddaddy rivalry of them all, the Yankees-Red Sox, which has produced a bruise-inducing 267 free passes via ball-to-body contact (154 Yankees hit, 113 Red Sox).

The root cause of the conflict lies in the fact that both of these teams regularly hit a lot of batters, regardless of rivalry status, so there’s bound to be fireworks when these two intimidators meet. Since 1998 they are the only two teams to hit more than a thousand batters from the mound, the Red Sox leading with 1,095 and the Rays safely in second at 1,036. A vast majority of their opponents however don’t react with malice, as Boston batters have been hit the 10th most times since ‘98 (913) and the perennial underdog or overachieving Rays come in 13th (867).

The top three victims on the Rays side of the BOS-TB rivalry — Carl Crawford (8), Jonny Gomes (7), Carlos Peña (6) — have not only each played for the Red Sox, they were all quite disappointing in their stints (although the jury is still out on Gomes who enters today’s doubleheader with a slash line of .208/.329/.352), Peña’s Boston experience coming before his time in Florida while Crawford and Gomes came after.

The Rays’ favorite targets in the batters box were the heart and soul of the Sox success with Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis each drilled 11 times, while Nomar Garciaparra, Dustin Pedroia and Jason Varitek getting the message eight times each. Perhaps as a testament to his congeniality, (or more likely the fear that he’s charge the mound) David Ortiz has only been drilled by a Rays hurler three times in 11 seasons.

On the hill, Tim Wakefield (13, also the major league leader over the span with 139 hit batters) and Pedro Martinez (10) account for nearly 20% of the damage inflicted on Tampa Bay while the current quartet of Jon Lester (6), John Lackey (4), Alfredo Aceves (3) and Franklin Morales (3) make up another 12.6%.

Former Rays ace Scott Kazmir, now of the Indians, hit nine Sox during his Tampa Bay career while former Sox lefty, Casey Fossum, was next with seven of his former mates feeling the pain. However Fossum’s HBPs brought much more of a message, coming in just 44 ⅓ innings over 10 appearances. Among current Rays only 2012 Cy Young Award winner David Price (5) has hit more than two Boston batters.

Long one of the game’s leading scorers and a key acquisition for the Bruins playoff run from the Dallas Stars, Jaromir Jagr, entered the 2013 Stanley Cup playoffs with 78 career postseason goals, good for 11th on the alltime list—just one behind Montreal Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau who notched his last playoff goal in 1971. Now 18 games into the playoffs, two-games into the Finals, and following a Game 2 blast that got past Chicago goaltender Corey Crawford but rang off the goalpost in overtime, Beliveau remains alone in 10th place and Jagr still has a zero in the goals column.

Mario Lemieux's former sidekick's goal-scoring drought has reached 27 games dating back to early last postseason when he was with the Philadelphia Flyers, an unimaginable stretch for someone who has scored one goal nearly every two NHL games for which he laced up his skates. Discounting the puck that eluded Crawford (since it wasn’t on net) Jagr, 41, has taken 51 shots this postseason, the most he’s unleashed in the playoffs since 1995-96, when he peppered goalies a career-high 74 times, but those resulted in a career-high-tying 11 goals. The drought has dropped his career postseason shooting percentage a full point, down from 12.9% to 11.9%.

Since 2008 (including three years spent with Avangard Omsk in Russia) Jagr has just one Stanley Cup playoff goal in 29 games. He's now in serious danger of being one of the least likely achievers of a dubious distinction: unleashing the most shots in one playoff season without scoring a goal in the post-Original Six Era. That title is currently held by former Florida Panthers defenseman Gord Murphy, who failed to score on any of his 53 shots during the 1996 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

What's even more shocking about the drought is that Jagr had a decent regular season. He managed 16 goals for the Stars and Bruins, admittedly a career low, but he was actually Boston's leading scorer from April 4, the day he joined the team, until the end of the regular season, with nine points, including two goals. And while not lighting the lamp, the sure Hall of Famer is contributing—his seven assists place sixth on the B's in helpers and tie him for seventh on the squad in points during these playoffs.

Game 3 is tonight at 8 PM at the Garden and on NBCSN.

Entering this season Jose Iglesias’ status as the Red Sox shortstop of the future was is serious doubt, coming off of a 2012 that saw his batting average stand at .118, the second-worst in Red Sox club history for someone with as many as his 77 plate appearances (catcher Ed Connolly batted .075 in 1931). But things have certainly changed for the now-23 year-old from Cuba. The infielder has been a stand out offensively for John Farrell’s crew, raising his average 331-points over last season to an astonishing .449 through his first 87 trips to the dish. Obviously we don’t expect this to continue, but in the name of good fun, here are some tidbits about the incredible Iglesias.

• He currently has the American League’s longest active hitting streak at 14 games which puts him one behind David Oritz for Boston’s longest streak of the season (Ortiz's 27-game streak was spread over two seasons).
• Although he’s batting .440 during the streak, his average has actually dropped from .464 at the start of it on May 27 to .449 where it currently stands.
• The last Sox rookie with a longer hitting streak was Jacoby Ellsbury who hit in 18 consecutive games in September, 2008.
• His .449 average is the highest in the major leagues among all players with at least 87 plate appearances.
• When we say the highest in the majors, we aren’t only talking about this season. If he were to not step up to the dish another time in 2013 (which we know won’t be the case) he would own the highest batting average of any player with at least 87 trips to the plate in modern baseball history (since 1901 when the American League came into existence).
• Currently holding that distinction is Hall of Fame 417-game winner Walter Johnson who went 42 of 97 at the plate in 1925 for a .433 average.
• Toss 19th Century players into the mix and Iglesias only drops to second, behind Levi Mayerle who batted a robust .492 for the National Association’s Athletics in 1871 (he also led the circuit in home runs with four).
• Despite hitting just one home run and seven doubles, his .577 slugging percentage is .001 ahead of NL home run leader Domonic Brown, and also higher than Mike Trout (.550), Evan Longoria (.544), Robinson Cano (.521) and Jose Bautista (.520) among many others. Yet that places him third on the Red Sox behind David Ortiz (.613) and Mike Carp (.680)
• His 2013 batting average and slugging percentage at Triple A Pawtucket are .202 and .319 respectively.

For the 10th time in their last 24 postseason games the Bruins needed extra time to settle a playoff game. But after winning four of the first five of those contests this postseason run, they came up short early Thursday morning, dropping a 4-3 game to the Blackhawks in Triple OT on a double deflection goal by Andrew Shaw at 12:08 of the third extra session.

Boston is part of a much larger trend in the NHL, as overtime postseason games have become the norm in the quest for the Stanley Cup. Of the 81 playoff games played thus far in 2013, 25 have gone to overtime (30.9%) with a total of 30 additional periods needed to decide a winner. That currently stands as tied for the third highest number of overtime games in NHL history, with the record set in 1993 when 28 of 85 contests (32.9%) went long (with 2001 at 26 of 86 [30.2%], just behind). This year each of the 15 playoff series has featured at least one extra period, the first time that’s happened since 1958 when the playoffs consisted of just three series.

Here’s how the rate of overtimes per playoff games has increased since 2006, the first post-lockout playoff run:

• Season---OTG---G---%OT
• 2013--------25----81---30.9%
• 2012--------25----86---29.1%
• 2011--------23----89---25.8%
• 2010--------18----89---20.2%
• 2009--------16----87---18.4%
• 2008--------16----85---18.8%
• 2007--------17----81---21.0%
• 2006--------20----83---24.1%

And so it begins. I'm David Sabino and I'm taking over as writer of the Stats Driven blog. If the name sounds familiar, you've probably read my work as stats editor and fantasy sports writer for Sports Illustrated, something I started doing the same year the Expos drafted an up-and-coming high school catcher from San Mateo, CA named Tom Brady. To this point my career has been spent analyzing stats across the vast spectrum of sports. Here I'll be focusing on the numbers behind the teams New Englanders care most about: The Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins.

The overall goal of the new-look Stats Driven is to provide answers to some of your questions, while putting sports news events into context. If you come away saying to yourself, "Wow, that's interesting," or if you can stump a friend with a bit of trivia you've picked up here, then it will have been a success.

All of the older posts will remain in this space, but from now on updates will be more frequent and much more tied to the latest news events, so check back often. Also, please feel free to send suggestions and comments (and follow me) on Twitter @SabinoSports. I'll be happy to hear from you.