85 reasons not to panic about the Red Sox

They have lost 5 in a row, and 9 out of 11.  Lately their potent offense can't hit, and their only good healthy starting pitcher, Jon Lester, just got rocked.  They were swept yesterday by the team breathing down their necks in the standings.  Yeah, they look like crap right now.  But here's the thing: the Red Sox have won 85 games this year.  They have lost only 61.  The current 5 game losing streak and 9 of 11 losses is eerily similar to their 0-6 and 2-10 start.  Now everything I'm about to say I have said before, but it's still true:  Baseball is a long season.  Weird things happen.  Occasionally small samples from a week or two are indicative of what is to come, but more often than not they are anomalies.  Flukes.  Weird coincidences.  The principle of "regression to the mean" generally holds true in baseball.  It's much more likely that the Red Sox team we see the rest of the way will play like the team that has won 85 times in a 6 month season, rather than the team that has lost 10 times in the last 2 weeks.