It goes without saying they’re not supposed to be taken too seriously, but you have to wonder what exactly goes into the so-called “Power Rankings” done by the major sports outlets. Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated and ESPN place the Good Guys at numbers 5, 2 and 1 based on the strength of their weak division, Carlos Quentin and John Danks. Seriously.

To be fair, these are valid points and the Sox as a whole are doing some fine work on the field. But you have to wonder exactly how closely the people who write at these levels follow individual teams. For instance, do the staff at ESPN know how absolutely hit-or-miss three of those mighty five starters have performed for the last month?

Do they see how the Good Guys are hitting a collective .195 with two outs and runners in scoring position? Perhaps they’re basing everything on more sensible averages, but that ignores the Sox’ winning by an average score of 7-5 but losing by an average of 4-2. Or maybe it’s a composite of scouting reports, but that would imply the Southsiders won’t swing at a breaking ball low and away with two strikes. Or outplaying only one serious contender in head-to-head play. Or the nightly swapping of one weak-hitting centerfielder for another.

At the same time, they are winning, albeit rarely prettily and often relying on freak occurrences that are not the stuff to pin your hopes to in the long run. But if they truly were the mightiest team in the land, we would not be able to say things like “if it weren’t for Carlos Quentin, they’d be looking up at Detroit” and “it’s a good thing Jose Contreras, John Danks and Gavin Floyd aren’t killing us night in and night out again” and “oh well, we’ll just wait for the walk-off.”

On the flipside of this are the glimmers of hope elsewhere across the roster: Jermaine Dye finding his swing again; Nick Swisher finally warming up; Alexei Ramirez making a strong case for Rookie of the Year; A.J. Pierzynski putting together possibly his best season yet. The catch is that when you add it all up, they’re not so much a great team made of complementary parts, but a collection of solid ballplayers that (thankfully) manage to win games. It may not be ideal, but for the time (and team) being that’s probably all we’ve got.