.300. That’s the Boston Red Sox record (9 wins 21 losses) in August. How sad. Needless to say, .300 is the worst record of any major league team this august. The team with the worst record this year, the Kansas City Royals, still has a .363 record for the season.

They won tonight, but only by sheer incompetence on the part of the Toronto Blue Jays. Alex Cora hit a ball to deep right center. The Jays’ Alex Rios was under it, had it, then lost control if it. It bounced out of his glove, into his other hand and then he managed to fling the ball 10 feet into the crowd. The Red Sox won 6-5 on that 2 run home run/error. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Clearly the injuries of David Wells, Trot Nixon, Tim Wakefield, Jon Lester, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, Lenny DiNardo, Keith Foulke, Adam Stern, Alex Gonzalez, Matt Clement, David Pauley, Lenny DiNardo, and Willy Mo Peno are a problem. That’s 15 players! The team is barely recognizable today. But they haven’t even been able to score when pitching has been (in rare cases) good. They seem to have lost their will to win.

I haven’t given up on them this season yet. I hope the turn of the calendar page will make as much as a difference from August to September as it did from July to August. They’re currently 8 games behind the Yankees and 6.5 games behind for the wild card. They have 28 games left.

Here’s what needs to happen for them to turn it around:

• Varitek needs to come back. Clearly the team is lost without whatever he does to lead them.
• Ortiz needs to get a weekend at a spa or something, stop stressing out, and hit 15 more homers, preferably with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th.
• Manny needs to stop being such a wuss and get back out there. Your knee is fine. Perhaps he could even pay attention to the game from left field once in a while.
• Coco Crisp needs to teach Willy Mo Pena how to catch a ball.
• Trot Nixon needs to be a tad less enthusastic. Play hard, but don’t frickin injure yourself.
• Josh Beckett needs to stop being so flaky. You’re making a gazillion dollars to pitch well in every outing, not every 1 out of 3.
• The entire bullpen with the exception of Papelbon and maybe Foulke need to be replaced. I shiver every time Tavarez or Delcarmen go in. The replacements should not be relievers with losing records and double-digit ERAs.
• Mike Burns needs to prove that he’s damn appreciative to be traded to a team that will at least finish over .500 this year.
• Wakefield needs to come back and pitch many long innings for the bullpen’s and all our sakes.
• Schilling, Lowell, Loretta and Youkilis need to be kept under constant supervision, away from all sharp or otherwise dangerous objects that might cause them to be injured.

Nevermind, I guess it is hopeless.