And now I just don’t know.

Last night the Red Sox, behind the frustratingly inconsistent Daniel Bard, beat Justin Verlander and the Tigers. Beat ‘em good. Pedroia was out with a torn adductor muscle in his thumb that apparently happened three weeks ago and was re-aggravated Monday afternoon doing what he does: diving for a grounder to throw out a batter at first.

Youkilis didn’t have a great night, but he’s batting around .300 since coming back from his injury and he’s getting those hits in clutch moments. Middlebrooks, Youkilis’s biggest upstart rival on the team, is hitting .308 but needs some seasoning on both sides of the plate before becoming an everyday big leagues player.^⁕ I don’t think the Sox should send Middlebrooks back down to Pawtucket, but nor do I think you deal Youkilis quite yet. When he’s healthy, which he seems to be, Youkilis is good for around .300 average and 20+ home runs.

But the Middlebrooks situation creates an awkward Middlebrooks at third, Youkilis at first, Gonzalez in RF deal that really screws over the two veteran players in favor of an upstart rookie. Of course, as long as Gonzo is hitting only .268 he’s gonna get the short end of that very expensive stick.

The Sox biggest problem is that they just keep losing players. The highest profile players on the DL are Crawford, Ellsbury, and Matsuzaka, who should all be back during a nebulous time period around the All-Star Break. But even the players who have stepped up in the absence of the marquis players are getting hurt now.

Darnell McDonald, Cody Ross, Aaron Cook (only made one appearance, during which he got the nastiest laceration on his leg I think I’ve ever seen). Now Saltalamacchia is day-to-day with some kind of lingering illness and Pedroia could go to the DL for as long as a month with his thumb issue. Most fans are just fine with Kelly Shoppach playing for Salty. No sane Sox fan wants to see the disaster that is Nick Punto start for Pedroia.

So, how does this team keep winning? I know, they’re just one game over .500, but they’re only 3.5 games back and they’ve gone 7-3 over the last 10 games. I guess the better question is how is this team not losing?

I think a big part of it can be found in the 7, 8, and 9 spots in the outfield last night.

LF: Daniel Nava. Has been making great catches and playing good defense. And he is a completely different player at the plate from the Nava we saw in 2010. Yeah, he hit his first MLB pitch out for a grand slam, but this time around his average is .034 higher and this on base percentage is .429 (vs only .351 in 2010). Nava has learned to see pitches better. Last time he had 46 strikeouts and 19 walks in 161 at bats (.286 SO%, .118 BB%). This year he’s had 58 at bats with 14 SO and 14 BB (.241 SO%, .241 BB%). Fewer strikeouts and more walks. That’s the very definition of an improving hitter.

CF: Scott Podsednik. He’s played all over. AL, NL, East, Central, West. Podsednik’s career average is .280 and he’s only got 42 home runs in his 10+ year career. But in the 6 games he’s played in Boston? He’s hitting .467. He’s also had some great saves in the outfield this week. There is no way he keeps up the average, but he’s a solid outfielder who is likely to be better than Marlon Byrd in the field and better than Darnell McDonald at the plate until Jacoby Ellsbury gets back.

RF: Ryan Sweeney. Ryan Sweeney is a great Fenway right fielder. In every way that JD Drew was a disappointment, Ryan Sweeney is not. His career average is .285, but it’s trending up. His .265 in Oakland last year look anomalously low and he’s batting .315 in 130 ABs this year. And in the wicked-tricky right field at Fenway he has shined. He dives for fly balls with great timing and skill. He plays that weird curving wall by the Pesky Pole like a natural. I could even see him taking a header into the bullpen to steal a home run away. Sweeney is going to end up as a long-term fixture on this team.

What else?

The other big factor is the settling down of the bullpen. Last night saw 6 different pitchers on the mound. After Bard left, after a respectable if not lights-out 5.1 innings, Bobby Valentine used almost every tool in his toolbox to get the W. It seems like he’s figured out the rolls that each of his pitchers can fill each night. Aceves is a good closer most nights. Atchison is a great long reliever that can get you a couple of scoreless innings if needed. Padilla is a setup guy that is off-and-on but really good when he’s on. And he throws at least one eephus pitch each outing and that makes me super happy as a baseball fan. The other guys are more situational guys that can come in and get one or two outs. They’ve sent the worst of the bunch back down to Pawtucket.

It does seem like Bobby V is figuring this team out, even though it seems to change on him week-to-week with injuries and acquisitions. And maybe he’s learning from mistakes made in the early weeks of the season. At least he isn’t getting the boos from the Fenway faithful that he was getting earlier.

I honestly have no idea where this Red Sox team will end up this year. They’re only 3.5 back right now. But the Orioles and Rays are on pace to win 95-100 games. To get near that, and have any significant hope for the playoffs, the Sox need to start playing near .550-.600 baseball. They’ve got to win 70 out of the next 133 games. And they’ll have to have a September completely unlike last year.

It is possible that they will drift along playing just-over-.500 baseball until the mid-summer when Ellsbury and Pedroia get back to 100%.^⁕⁕ Maybe Dice-K will come back better than ever with good control and a better work ethic under Bobby V and pitching for a contract. Maybe he’ll replace Bard (or the declining Buchholz) and they can fill out the bullpen some more. Maybe Nava and Middlebrooks will continue to shine and become long-term left-side solutions. Maybe some trade-deadline magic can make things better roster-wise.

Nothing would surprise me about this team any more.

^⁕Last year in Pawtucket Middlebrooks hit .333 and .302 in Portland the year before. But it’s still a bit early to call his .300+ in the major leagues a reliable stat. He’s only got 91 at bats and may start regressing to his natural mean.

^⁕⁕I have completely, totally given up any hope of Carl Crawford living up to his contract. I’ll believe it when I see it.

I have switched back.

At the time my issue with Instapaper was only that it wasn't perfectly suited to the way I was using it.

The problem, for me, is that Instapaper’s ‘one thing’ doesn’t actually fit what I use it for. I do use it to save articles. But I also use it to save links, videos , blog posts with photos, etc. Basically anything I find on the Internet that I want to save, whether to read later or watch later or whatever, I throw into Instapaper and get to it later.

And it is true that Pocket has a lot of functionality. The coolest being watching videos directly in the app. But, to be honest, that proved to be not all that helpful a feature. Usually if I'm saving a video to watch later it's because it's either too long to watch right then or I might want to post it to the site later. In the former case I would probably rather watch it on my television via AirPlay, so it doesn't matter whether its in the Pocket app or in Mobile Safari or whatever. In the latter case, I really just need access to it on my Mac Mini (I KNOW.) because that's where I do video posts (it has to do with how I have TextExpander set up. Long story.). So it kind of doesn't matter at all that Pocket lets me view videos in-app.

What Pocket doesn't have is a really pleasant reading experience. The Instapaper reading experience is just excellent. Beautiful fonts. Customizable font sizes, line height, margins. Really nice dimming to night mode based on the current time. These are features that Read It Later may have eventually added, but the app-for-saving-everything Pocket surely will not. They have no incentive to put that much effort into that part of the app.

And there are little things that Marco Arment puts into Instapaper that make the experience top-notch, whether we as customers notice them or not.

For instance, Marco only very rarely asks Instapaper users to go rate the app. I really can't stand it when an app interrupts what I'm doing with the app to try to solicit a self-serving review. If I weren't such a lazy man I would take the opportunity to give those apps a negative review just for that. (To be completely fair, I can't remember Pocket doing this. I just know that Instapaper doesn't do it often enough for me to notice or get annoyed.)

Instapaper also delays the auto time-out feature so your iPad or iPhone screen doesn't turn off while you're reading a page. As Marco discussed briefly in the latest episode of his podcast this was a lot of programming work for him, but makes the app more enjoyable for people. And that's even if they don't explicitly know about the feature.

Bottom line, the pure experience of using Instapaper is better. And better enough to get me to go though the (admittedly not-very-painful) process of switching back. I was seduced by a neat, 'new' app with a cool video and some neat features. But when the shine wore off I wanted the quality of Instapaper back.

Here’s a video of the launch:

More videos from launch day here.

Phil Plait, over on the Bad Astronomy blog, posted a photo of Dragon taken from the ISS as it passed under the station during maneuvering tests.

Well, I wanted a wallpaper of that photo (like I do) so I went to the NASA flickr page for the photo, downloaded the largest size, and did what I do…

You can get the file, along with iPad and iPhone versions of course, over on my …/files/wallpapers page. It’s named Dragon.zip (OBVS).

Also, out of pure curiosity, I checked out the EXIF data for the original photo… It was taken on a Nikon D3x, which will run you around $8,000. And although the EXIF data doesn’t show the make or model of the lens, it does show a focal length of 1200mm. The D3x is a full-frame camera so that’s a real 1200mm. I think they probably used an 800mm with a 1.5x teleconverter, but that’s still around $10,000. So, somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000-20,000 all together. Clearly NASA spares no expense…

I especially like it later on when the beams hit each other and spark.

A little bit more info about the installation here.

[Notice you never see the lights go completely out. These crews work twenty-four hours a day, if needed. And they definitely needed to during this four day stretch.]

(via kottke.org)

There are always lots of interesting trees in the park.

I saw frogs, a snake, and a turtle. Only the turtle stayed still enough for a photo.

Some landscape photos from along the trail:

Tree reflection in creek.

You cannot take photos at Pocahontas without getting one of the spillway.

Pocahontas has some great spots for photography. When I have a decent tripod I plan to go back and spend a lot more time around the creeks and spillway.

Well, they do call it ‘A masterpiece of traditional craftsmanship’.

So what comes in this set?

There are two offered sets. Here is what’s included, minus the leather camera strap, lens cloths, and (yes) white gloves, with the cost of the non-special-edition versions, according to B&H Photo:

Set One:

• Leica M9-P camera body: $8,000

• Summilux M 50mm ƒ1.4: $4,000

Set Two:

• Leica M9-P camera body: $8,000

• Summicron M 28mm ƒ2: $4,300

• Summicron M 90mm ƒ2: $4,000

• Noctilux M 50mm ƒ0.95: $11,000

But if you get the special edition sets you do get all of the extras. And there is handcrafted Hermès leather on the camera, special edition top plate and dials, etc. The lenses are all special edition as well.

Set One, with just the 50mm ƒ/1.4 is available now in a limited run of only 300 worldwide at just $25,000.

Set Two, which has the three lenses listed above, including the (YES!) ƒ0.95, also comes with a the hand-crafted camera bag and two-volume photography book showcasing the work of Jean-Louis Dumas, shot of course on his Leica. Only available in a ‘strictly limited edition’ of 100 sets, it will be available in June at $50,000.

I am in the market for a new camera…

More info at the Leica website.

Well, it isn't so much that they're bad. It's that they're frustratingly, unpredictably bad. It used to be that you never stopped watching a Sox game early because no matter the score they could always pull it out and grab a win. This year, it seems no matter the score (see the evaporating 9-0 lead vs. the Yankees on April 21) the Sox can find a way to blow it. No lead is safe.

So... Why?

Batting? The team's batting stats have been pretty good, actually. They're second in the AL with 155 runs scored (Texas has 160) and second in team batting average with .273 (Texas is hitting .291). David Ortiz is having a great Spring, batting .380 with 7 HR and 23 RBI. Only the rookie Will Middlebrooks has a better average, .381, but he's only got 21 major league at bats. A lot of the other guys are having a pretty good, if not spectacular, season at the plate so far.

Fielding? It's been just ok. Some bonehead errors (see Jarrod Saltalamacchia and the perennially awful Nick Punto), but overall the defense is pretty good, even with Youkilis and Ellsbury on the DL. They have the third fewest errors committed (only Texas and the Yankees have fewer) and they're tied with Seattle for third best fielding percentage.

So then it's the pitching:

It's the pitching, stupid.

— Nicholas Ford (@fordnr579) May 6, 2012

The Red Sox team ERA is the second highest in the AL, 5.31. Ok, a little basic math... 155 runs scored over 28 games is 5.54 runs per game. If the Sox had the impressive team ERA the Orioles have right now, 2.99, we wouldn't be having this discussion. But as it is, the pitching has been terrible. And this is really why the Sox are 12-16 versus a respectable 16-12 or better.

The bullpen has blown leads. They were full-on awful until Justin Thomas and Mark Melancon got sent back to Pawtucket. With that, and Rich Hill coming back, things have improved quite a bit. Indeed, Atchison, Padilla, and Morales have looked pretty good over the last week or so. The real problem now seems to be the starters.

The starters have been mediocre. Daniel Bard (a converted closer) has the best ERA of the lot with 4.38. Clay Buchholz has been a mere shell of his former self, sporting an ERA of 9.09. That's spotting the other team one run for every inning he pitches. And the "aces", Beckett and Lester, haven't been great. They've been different pitchers from start to start. Certainly not dependable. And for Yaz's sake, if Bobby V can't learn when to take struggling pitchers out the ERA's are going to continue to rise. If I can sit at home watching and know exactly when a guy should get pulled, then the manager with 15+ years experience sitting in the dugout should see it, too.

The fact is that without good pitching it really doesn't matter how good your offense and defense are. See Kansas City for decent offense with awful pitching. See Baltimore for good offense with lights-out awesome pitching.

The Sox have an arguably great offense and a very good defense in the field. But the pitching has let them down badly this year. And the result of that has been wins against teams with bad pitching (where the Sox offense could overpower them) and losses against good teams that pitch and hit well (Detroit, New York, Baltimore).

Until the pitching situation is fixed, whether through trades or Buchholz getting a phantom injury or Matsuzaka coming back soon with a new elbow, this team is going to continue to flounder despite the best efforts of the rest of the team.

Baby Goat!

You can see a reflection of Beatrix in this greedy goat’s eye.

After spending time at the Children’s Farm and having our picnic, we went over to the Nature Center. But because all of the animals there are behind (unbelievably reflective) glass, only a couple of photos turned out well.

It was a great, relaxing day with my girls. The perfect way to spend my birthday.