Wedge offers view from the other side

From the other side, at the command post of the visiting dugout, the Red Sox have succeeded this year for an assortment of reasons.

Here is one of them:

"I think with Boston, their players have a unique ability to step up when it’s time to step up," said Eric Wedge, manager of the Cleveland Indians team that just completed a four-game series at Fenway Park. "That’s experience. That’s clutch players. You have to create those situations for yourself. They’ve had a heck of a run, man, and it’s still going."

Baseball is a game of consistency, of course. From week to week, month to month, and year to year, the best players and teams never really fade. They just keep going. The Cleveland Indians led the major leagues with 102 combined regular season and postseason victories through Game 4 of the American League Championship Series last fall, just one win shy of a trip to the World Series. Since that time, Cleveland has gone 79-83 while the Red Sox have gone 101-65.

Now the Red Sox are going back to the playoffs and Cleveland is going back to the drawing board, though it should be noted that the Indians will do so with payroll roughly half the size of Boston's. Nonetheless, the Red Sox have been reshaped since the end of last season, when the engine that drove Boston’s championship run was nestled into the heart of its batting order in the tandem of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez.

Wedge will be the first to tell you that the Red Sox have changed, but he cautions those who believe they have changed for the worse.

"I just think they’re a little different. It doesn’t mean they’re not as good," Wedge said."If anything, they’re a little deeper, more balanced. I think that a lot of people might feel [that there has been a regression] just because Manny’s not here.

"They’re a different team because they’ve got speed they can implement as part of their game, a little more athleticism," Wedge continued. "I think their bullpen’s better. I think they’re deeper.’’

Better? Deeper? Maybe, here in Boston, we are spending too much time examining the pixels and not enough looking at the picture. Entering the final weekend of the 2008 regular season: