With all the hype that accompanied the triumph of the long-suffering Boston Red Sox last autumn over the various curses that had haunted them for the better part of a century, it was pretty easy to forget that there was a baseball angle to the story of their triumph over the ghosts of Babe Ruth and the racist management of yesteryear. This season, so much attention has been paid to various dramas – the Manny Ramirez trade rumors, the spat between the talented Mrs. Curt Schilling and the lovely Mrs. Johnny Damon, and Keith Foulke’s numerous run-ins with his surgeon, for starters – that the Red Sox standing as the second or third best team in the league seems like something of an afterthought. Leaving aside all the subplots out of a Major League sequel, are the Red Sox good enough to win a second consecutive World Series title?

In the sense that any team that makes the playoffs has a good shot at getting hot and winning a championship, the answer is yes. In the sense that the question is meaningful, I’m a lot less sure. This team has some tremendous strengths, but its weaknesses are equally serious, and if the season ended today, I think the Red Sox would be less likely than Oakland, Chicago, or Anaheim to win the pennant.

The main reason is obvious: Unlike a year ago, when their rotation was headed by Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez, this team doesn’t have any pitching. The Sox sport the fourth-worst road ERA in the league, and the fifth-worst home mark. That’s only partly a function of Schilling’s injury and subsequent ineffectiveness as a reliever.

Entering the season, the Sox were counting on Matt Clement, David Wells, and Bronson Arroyo to be their top three starters. Clement is a very good starter, but Wells and Arroyo were risky bets – Wells because of his age and conditioning, and Arroyo because he can’t get lefties out. Arroyo has been decent, with a 4.28 ERA, but Clement has lived down to the expectation of skeptics who thought his 69-75 career record coming into the season counted for more than the live sinker and high strikeout rate that had the Sox thinking he’d serve as a worthy replacement for Pedro. His 11-3 record is a lot less telling than his 4.53 ERA and the fact that his last start, a six inning, two-run job against Texas, was his first good outing since June 25.(This bad stretch came a month before the comebacker that struck Clement in the head.) Wells hasn’t been much better, allowing a .287 batting average to opponents and posting a 4.43 ERA

These are solid enough performances, but they put more pressure on the offense, which can handle it, and the bullpen, which can’t. (Any team that trades for Mike Remlinger and his 4.91 ERA is in bad shape.) All told, despite the Yankees’ pitching woes this season, they’ve allowed only three more runs than Boston, which is staggering – the Sox, after all, haven’t been pitching Al Leiter and Aaron Small.

Last year, Boston won the title in no small part because of a defense that was very good after the acquisitions of Doug Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera. Between the variety of bums at second and third base and an outfield that collectively has the arm strength of a sore-armed grandmother and only slightly better range, this year’s edition isn’t doing its pitching staff any favors.

To run a championship-caliber staff out, the Red Sox will need two things to go right. Schilling will have earn a promotion from his current job as emergency closer and prove durable and effective enough to start every fourth day (his latest blown save, a three-run disaster in the ninth inning in Detroit on Monday night, was not a good omen), and Foulke will have to be a shutdown closer upon his return from the DL, where he’s been since arthroscopic knee surgery on July 7. It’s possible that one of these things will happen, rather unlikely that both will.

All this leaves the Sox disproportionately reliant on their offense, which is, fortunately, the best in baseball despite the rather ludicrous lack of production from first baseman Kevin Millar, who’s hit all of four home runs this season. Johnny Damon, Edgar Renteria, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Jason Varitek form a terrifying offensive core – the quintet has compiled a combined batting line of .302 BA/.379 OBA/.516 SLG – that is every bit the equal of the Yankees’ devastating front five.

Unfortunately for the Red Sox, they’re most likely going to be facing the teams best suited to shutting down their offensive attack once the postseason arrives. The A’s and White Sox rank first and second in the league in turning balls in play into outs, and the best starters on both teams excel at preventing home runs and throwing strikes, thus avoiding walks. Take the walk and the home run away from the Red Sox and you leave them reliant on stringing together base hits to score – not the ideal strategy for a team featuring molasses-slow hitters under any circumstance, let alone when they’re hitting balls toward the tightest defenses in the game.

The Angels, whose starting pitchers give up long balls and walks and whose defense is quite a lot more porous than those of the A’s and White Sox, present a much better matchup for Boston, but even to win the pennant Boston is almost certainly going to have to beat either Oakland or Chicago. While they’re capable of doing so, they’re going to need some luck and some unexpectedly good pitching to do it. Should they make it to the Series, their National League opponent might well prove softer competition than their junior-circuit rival. Past their aces, the Cardinals and Braves feature merely solid starters of the sort the Red Sox should feast on, while the Astros, the other team that looks like it has a real shot at the pennant, has an offense nearly as weak as Boston’s pitching. In all, the Sox aren’t a good bet to win the pennant, but if they manage to do so I think Boston see something it hasn’t since 1916 – a second straight championship.