I wrote this earlier today, before I heard about Manny testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. I didn't have time this evening to get into that, but I'll post about it on the weekend.

Stuff floating around in my head:

• The Dodgers broke the all-time record with a 13-0 start at home, which is pretty amazing. And they have another game against the Nationals tonight!

• I'm very excited about going to see the new Star Trek movie tomorrow night. Despite 34 years as a Star Trek fan, I'm not one of these people who is crazy about canon: I don't expect the bridge in a $150 million movie made in 2009 to look the same as the one in a $300,000 per episode TV series made in 1966. I have three criteria for this to be both a good move and good Star Trek for me:
• It has to be a good story, well told. This seems pretty basic, but there have been enough Trek movies that have gotten this wrong (The Motion Picture, The Final Frontier and Nemesis, anyone?) that it's a concern.
• They have to get the Classic Trek characters right. I'm not saying the actors should be imitating Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan, et al. That would be a disaster. I'm saying that the new actors need to figure out who these characters are based on what we saw over the decades. It's easy in either fan or pro fiction to tell when the author has the characters "voices" wrong - they just don't react to situations and to each other the way they should. It's critically important that Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov are true to what we know they will become.
• The movie has to stay true to what Star Trek is. Above everything else, Star Trek embodies an optimistic view of the future and embraces the differences between people as something to take delight in. As much as I love Battlestar Galactica, the new Star Trek can't become dark like that. If it does, it's not Star Trek any more.

• Justin Masterson had his second straight mediocre start last night. At this stage of his career, I think Masterson is best suited to be in the Okajima/Ramirez/Saito/Delcarmen rotation in the 6th-8th innings ahead of Papelbon, and he can pitch multiple innings when needed. I think Francona may move Masterson back into that role once Daisuke comes back from the DL and keep Penny in the rotation, at least until Smoltz is ready to pitch.

• Heard an interesting interview with a physicist on Baseball Prospectus Radio this morning. He was talking about how randomness affects baseball statistics. For me, the most interesting thing he came up with was this: in a 7 game series, the most talented team should only win about 60% of the time (explaining say, the 2006 Cardinals). To statistically guarantee that the most talented team would win 95% of the time, the World Series would have to be 269 games long!