By the end of the week, we will be halfway through the MLB regular season. The good thing about this marker is that you can easily project a player’s potential season by multiplying everyone’s current stats by 2. The bad thing about the halfway mark is that we only have half of the baseball season left before we settle down with fall and make do with the other sports until spring training starts next February.

So far, so good for my beloved Red Sox. The Sox are battling the Cubbies and the D Rays for the best record in baseball despite a series of injuries. Curt Schilling is out for the season and maybe for ever. Big Papi, Manny and Mike Lowell have missed significant time. But with depth, the Carmine Hose have survived and prospered.

Schilling has been gone from the beginning but the depth of the starting pitching has kept the team on top. The Sox rotation currently consists of Josh Beckett, Dice-K, old reliable Tim Wakefield, Jon Lester and Justin Masterson. Dice K lost his first game of the season yesterday. Jon Lester hs emerged as an effective starter swith a no-hitter after battling cancer and wildness for the last few years. In his first season, Masterson has been a revelation with his 6:7 frame and hard sinker and slider. Bartolo Colon has been effective so far but his sore arm makes him undependable over the long haul. Even without Schilling the Sox have depth in the rotation with Clay Buccholz and a promising newcomer Michael Bowden waiting in the wings in AAA Pawtucket and AA Portland. With young pitchers liike Beckett, DIce-K, Lester, Masterson, Buccholz and Bowden, the Sox should have a strong rotation for the next few years. All these starters are in their twenties with Beckett the senior partner at 28.

David Ortiz has been the biggest offensive loss with an injury to the sheath that holds the tendon in his wrist. Big Popi’s injury is not as severe as the Sox brass feared and he should be taking batting prectice in a week and a half. Popi’s wrist and knee injuries should prompt the Sox to plan for life after Ortiz and Manny. But since Big Papi went down, J.D. Drew has come up big. I suspect that in a few years, the Sox will be a different team relying on real good pitching and players like Jacoby Ellsbury and Dusty Pedroia as the core of a small ball offense.

There are problems and concerns. The D Rays (they will always be the D Rays to me) are for real and have kept up with the Sox for the whole season. The biggest problem has been the set up guys in the bullpen. Hedeki Okijima has not pitched well and Mike Timlin is at the end of a career with a lot of miles on his arm and 4 World Series championshops (2 with the Sox and 2 with the Blue Jays) in his pocket. The Sox will have to depend on young arms like Manny Delcarmen and Craig Hansen to pick up the slack in the innings leading up to Jon Papelbon. The other problem is that Julio Lugo at SS has been very shaky. The Sox have done a lot of running with Ellsbury, Coco Crist and Lugo in the lineup but the Sox should worry about going into the postseason with a big question mark at a key position. Alex Cora is a reliaible utility infielder but probably wouldn’t be effective as an everyday player. The Sox have Jed Lowrie in AAA but some scouts don’t think that he has a strong enough arm to play SS.

But at halftime, the glass is half full for the Red Sox.