You, loyal reader, have read over 90 posts on our blog here, and by now should have a somewhat firm grasp on the different personalities of Lefty and Righty. While we’ve been pretty good at sticking to baseball, we’ve snuck in some non-baseball items that should allow you to take the following quiz knowledgeably.

Lefty and Righty each answered the following 14 questions. We randomized who was answer “a” and who was answer “b”. See how well you know Lefty and Righty by reading our responses and voting on who you think authored response “a”. Answers are at the bottom. We’re not WordPress savvy enough to tally your total for you, so we’re working on the honor system here.

UPDATE: The poll plugin is really buggy and not working. Keep tally the old fashioned way and check your answers at the bottom when you’re done!

If you get 14/14 we’ll put your picture in our next blog (or not if you don’t want us to)! Good luck!

1) Kanye West is…

a. A jackass, but an extremely talented one. I’m partial to his early stuff (“Keep your nose out the sky /Keep your heart to God/ And keep your face to the rising sun” speaks to me more than “I am a god/ So hurry up with my damn massage/ In a French-ass restaurant/ Hurry up with my damn croissants”) but everything he does is interesting and somewhat original.

b. One of the best musicians of his generation. Also probably the most frustrating. Even odds that he abandons music entirely at some point to devote his time to designing a crappy fashion line.

2) The Porcello contract is…

a. A total waste of money. What on earth were they thinking?

b. Too early to call. In his second year with the Red Sox, John Lackey had a 6.41 ERA  in 28 starts. That contract worked out alright.

3) What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

a. Cookie Dough

b. Orange Sherbet

4) The Red Sox should be A) Buyers B) Sellers at the trade deadline.

a. A. Bring me Cueto!

b. A, buyers. I’m sure management would love to be sellers, but they’re just not far enough out of the race to justify it.

5) The last 5 songs I listened to are…

a. 1. Maneater – Nelly Furtado
2. Apartment Story – The National
3. Joel the Lump of Coal – The Killers
4. Set of Jigs – Julie Fowlis
5. Doin’ It Right – Daft Punk

b. 1. Dance Yrself Clean – LCD Soundsystem
2. Adalida – George Strait
3. L$D – A$AP Rocky
4. Broken Arrows – Zac Brown Band/Avicii (I can’t stop listening to this. Help.)
5. love. – Kid Cudi

6) My favorite pre-World Series Era Red Sox player was…
(Nomar counts as World Series Era. He has a ring.)

a. Rod Beck? Either him or El Guapo.

b. John Valentin. Sidenote: The first Red Sox player I ever knew was Jeff Reardon because I had his baseball card. I called him “Jeff Wierdo”,

7) My highlight of the first half was…

a. Brock Holt hitting for the cycle. Tough year so far.

b. Red Sox beating the first place Royals 13-2 and taking the series. This came after the worst stretch of the season and they started to turn it around from there.

8) Kid Cudi is…

a. A genius. A luminary. Like an older brother. My spirit animal.

b. Kind of interesting, but seems to me to be more about atmosphere than tune. Erase Me is a jam.

9) How many more starts will Clay Buchholz make this season?

a. 12. Call me an optimist, I guess.

b. 10.

10) What is your favorite fast food restaurant?

a. It would be silly to say anything other than McDonald’s. Though I do love KFC.

b. Culver’s.

11) Pam or Karen?

a. Pam in a landslide.

b. Pam.

12) Will Brock Holt make another All-Star team?

a. You know what? I was thinking I was gonna say no, but screw it. Yeah, he will. All he has to do is hit for three months again.

b. Anything is possible.

13) List the Harry Potter series in order of preference.

a. 3, 4, 7, 5, 1, 6, 2

b. 3, 5, 4, 7, 6, 1, 2

14) There’s a baseball game tomorrow against a team of All-Star level talent, and your life depends on the result. You can pick one Red Sox pitcher, one Red Sox hitter, and also a pitcher and hitter from the rest of the MLB. The rest of your team is made up of your friends and family. Who do you choose?

a. I thought about choosing Betts or Bogaerts, but Holt is the right choice, for the same reason that Ned Yost took him. Who knows what positions my friends can play? Brock can play them all. Also, Eduardo Rodriguez, praying he doesn’t blow up. And let’s not get fancy here. I’ll take Scherzer and Harper.

b. I’m taking Papi (defense be damned!) and a healthy Clay Buchholz. Give me Mike Trout and Madison Bumgarner. Madison can pitch forever and pinch hit. Trout may end up being the greatest player of our generation.

Answers:

1) a. Righty
b. Lefty
2) a. Lefty
b. Righty
3) a. Righty
b. Lefty
4) a. Righty
b. Lefty
5) a. Lefty
b. Righty
6) a. Lefty
b. Righty
7) a. Lefty
b. Righty
8) a. Righty
b. Lefty
9) a. Lefty
b. Righty
10) a. Lefty
b. Righty
11) a. Lefty
b. Righty
12) a. Lefty
b. Righty
13) a. Righty
b. Lefty
14) a. Lefty
b. Righty

I’ve been avoiding writing this all day, because this must be rock bottom. And if it’s not rock bottom, I don’t want to see how far down this team can go. The Sox are now the fourth-worst team in baseball by run differential, and the worst in the AL East by 74 runs. The only positive way to spin that is to note that we’re not as far back in the race as you’d think, knowing that stat.

When I was a kid, I’m not sure what I thought about baseball, and how you win. I can guarantee that I think about it differently now. Now, i think of the entire season as an aggregate, based on percentages and averages and consistent performance – if you have [insert player here], he’s going to give you this many doubles, or this many strikeouts, or this many stolen bases. And if you throw enough of those parts together, you’ll have a team that wins more than it loses. Every team tries to do that, unless you’re rebuilding. And the Sox have the luxury of a lot of money to spend in order to go find the right players. But it’s not working.

I don’t know what’s going on with this team. I don’t know if they should wait for things to turn around, because statistically they must (even though I’m pretty sure that’s a logical fallacy). I don’t know if they should start cutting some people loose to shake things up. I was fully on board for waiting for the tide to shift for two and a half months and now I’m starting to reconsider. If you have six guys who have the pedigree to bat .300 and only one of them’s doing it, is that a sign of a deeper problem?

There’s a part of my mind where baseball is still just about execution, about going out and being better than the other team. This is easier to grasp in a game like basketball, where you can physically exert your will on the opponent. But baseball is so random, so luck-based that the only way to beat luck entirely is to hit the ball 400 feet in the air. It is all about the stats, isn’t it? Players are about as good as they’re expected to be, trending up, and then down, and then they lose it completely at the end. And maybe that’s good for this team. Maybe these guys still have gas in the tank, so they can’t possibly be this bad over an entire season.

But as much as this is an aggregate sport, about numbers accrued over time, it’s also a game with tests that take place moment-to-moment. And right now, there are a lot of guys on this team who don’t show up for every moment. That could change. And I hope it does, and I hope the Sox find some luck. But at this moment, it seems like the Sox are shit out of it.