The baseball winter meetings are over, and the Red Sox find themselves without an ace. Except for the one they have. And the Japanese guy who might yet become one. And the old cowboy back for one more year. And the two or three promising kids who might be a couple years away. But they haven't landed Johan Santana, which is either a failure (if they really were after Santana) or a success (if their goal was to make some noise and/or scare the Yankees out of the derby). The Angels seem to be out of the running, but now the Mets are interested. The Marlins, not so much.

Tony Massarotti says the Sox should look at Baltimore's Erik Bedard as a suitable consolation prize. He says Baltimore's reluctant to trade a good pitcher within the division, because apparently there's a realistic chance that the Orioles will be in the pennant race this year.

The Bruins suffered their second straight loss last night. Tuukka Rask, making his Garden debut, gave up three Montreal goals in the first before settling in. That was too much, as the Bruins played a spirited rest of the game but wound up on the bad end of a 4-2 loss. Canada Week at the Garden continues tonight as the Celtics host the Toronto Raptors.

Speaking of the Celtics, did you see ESPN's Playoff Oddsmaker? They ran the rest of the season through a computer 5,000 times, and calculated that the Celtics have a 100% chance of making the playoffs, a 54.7% chance of making the Finals, and a 43.4% chance of winning it all. Statistically speaking, those numbers are what scientists call "horse crap", but that's not stopping us.

Michael Felger is of the opinion shared by 99.5% of Patriot fans: that they should, and will, go for it and try to run the regular-season table. We look at the schedule, and feel that if we get past Pittsburgh on Sunday, we're golden. Of course, Pittsburgh is pretty good; they play the same style that Baltimore does, only much better, and you just have to say the name "Carson Palmer" to give us horrifying visions of Tom Brady grimacing and reaching for his knee.

OK. Deep breath. But if everyone survives the Steelers game, the Pats have two games left against Division 1-AA teams and a Giants team that will have their playoff position locked in and won't be playing for history. Hmmmm. (We also like the Sports Guy's idea of deactivating Chris Hanson before the Jets game, and Bill telling Eric Mangini, "We're not punting today.")

Photo from Flickr's Conlawprof.