Baseball’s commenters continue to insist it’s “early” — but if you’re a Boston Red Sox fan, the clock is ticking. With the Nationals rained out in St. Louis, it seemed as good a time as any to check out Boston’s best, switching the channel from the MASN St. Louis broadcast to CSN California, where the struggling Bosox were facing off against Oakland’s Brett Anderson, one of the best young pitchers in the game. The Red Sox have always had difficulties against Anderson and, as it turns out, last night was no different, as Anderson and the A’s shut down the Red Sox 5-0.

The difference in the game was Anderson — who threw eight complete innings of four hit ball, burying his curve and baffling Bosox hitters. Boston’s best flailed away, notching eight strike outs while Anderson walked one. The good news for Boston (if there is such a thing) is that its pitching was strong through seven, with John Lackey returning to form: he looked just fine in six complete, holding the White Elephants to a single run on four hits. But this might not have been the best night to give Hideki Okajima his first outing of the season; the just-returned Okajima threw batting practice to the A’s light hitting roster, and they lit him up (.2 innings, two hits, three runs — that’s a 40.50 ERA).

“It’s awful early,” Sox manager Terry Francona said after the game. “It’s a small sample, but their guy just pitched a great game tonight. They’re a hot staff right now.” Well, it’s not that early — and while the Sox are hardly out of it in the A.L. East (and yeah, there’s still a long way to go), their best hitters are struggling (the team is 10th of 14 in the A.L.), and their pitching is nowhere to be seen (they’re dead last in the A.L. in team ERA). You can see their struggles in their eyes: Carl Crawford looks like he’s been hit with a shovel, and Kevin Youkilis shakes his head after nearly every poor inning.

So here’s the question: is it that Brett Anderson was that good — or that Boston just can’t get on track? For Francona, the glass is still half full: don’t worry, Boston is recovering from its early season woes (he says), they just ran into a tough young pitcher. But for Boston fans, that reassuring message is getting harder and harder to believe. Anderson is only the beginning. The A’s have the best young staff in the game (Brett Anderson, Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, reclamation project Brandon McCarthy — oh, and Dallas Braden and his temporary replacement, Tyson Ross) and Boston is 0-7 on the road. It might not seem likely, but it’s possible that Boston will emerge from the caverns of the Oakland Coliseum with a record of 5-13. In which case, it’ll be damned hard for the Back Bay faithful to do anything but panic.

D5 — as in the fifth page of Section D. Section D is the Sports section of the Washington Post. Page five of said section is where I found the Associated Press story about Dallas Braden’s perfect game several days ago. And what was on the front page of the Washington Post sports section?  A story about a track meet in Philadelphia  — which was held last month. On the website the perfect game story was listed 16th — that is, the Post considered it the sixteenth most important sport’s story of the day. Dallas Braden’s perfect game was listed lower than “NCAA lacrosse,” “Redskins Insider” . . . and the “Chat Schedule.” Way to go Post.

To put things in perspective, there have been 19 perfect games in the last 130 years of baseball.  That’s one perfect game, on average, every six and a half years. Put another way, there are (on average), thousands of games between each perfect game. So a perfect game is a very rare occurrence; to say the least. You would think it would be worth it for Post sports reporters to conclude that it’s worth making a big deal about Dallas Braden’s gem.

This will always be a football town; that’s understood. But this is also supposed to be a great sports town. But you’d never know it from the Post.