While a horrified six-state region tries to wipe the images of grown men dressed as female pirates and Teletubbies from our minds, the Boston Red Sox are looking like a beat-up baseball team heading to the wire.

The foundation the Red Sox have built their 2007 success upon, pitching, is now showing numerous cracks. The starting rotation after Josh Beckett is riddled with question marks. Curt Schilling has pitched better than his record would indicate over the last month, but is clearly not the power pitcher he once was. Whether it’s fatigue or having been figured out by American League hitters, Daisuke Matsuzaka’s struggles continue, particularly against good lineups with selective hitters. And Tim Wakefield has morphed from Cy Young contender to Rolando Arrojo with a knuckleball.

This might not have been so disconcerting six weeks ago because everyone would have felt comfortable with the starters giving us six solid innings and then turning it over to a lights-out bullpen. Hideki Okajima isn’t disproving the fatigue concerns that surround his fellow Japanese import, having given up nine earned runs in his last 5 1/3 innings. Terry Francona still seems to think that Eric Gagne can’t be trusted with anything but at least a seven-run lead. Jonathan Papelbon imploded against the Yankees on Friday night, but should be OK. Mike Timlin and Manny Delcarmen have been solid, but given age/injury history, can’t be counted on every night, especially Timlin.

If you had told a Red Sox fan in June, there would be so many concerns with the pitching staff in the final weeks of the season, they would have probably consoled themselves with the hope that the offense had finally come around to resembling the run-scoring machine we’ve all become accustomed to the last few years. But aside from Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Mike Lowell and the recent contributions of Jacoby Ellsbury, this offense might be the worst they’ve had since Tom Brunansky was hitting clean-up for Butch Hobson in 1992.

Injuries haven’t helped, of course. Even though he was having a subpar year before he got hurt, Manny Ramirez’s presence in the middle of the lineup has been missed. David Ortiz’s balky knee is flaring up again. Kevin Youkilis was just starting to show signs of overcoming his second-half swoon when Chien-Ming Wang hit him in the wrist. And now, 150 games of throwing himself into walls or onto the turf after fly balls appears to have caught up to Coco Crisp.

The fact that J.D. Drew has the second-best batting average this month behind Ortiz should tell you just how much this offense is hurting, literally and figuratively.

But even when all of those people were in the lineup every day, it was at best inconsistent.

Despite all of this, the Red Sox will hang on to their lead in the A.L. East. What happens after that, though, is anybody’s guess. You need to do two things to win in the postseason – pitch well and hit good pitching. Boston’s chances of doing the latter are almost negligible, and their chances of doing the former rest on an ace at the front of the rotation, a stud in the back of the bullpen and a disturbing number of uncertainties in between.