Boston continues to come up short.

Byline: Paul Jarvey

COLUMN: PAUL JARVEY

Shortstop for the Red Sox has been like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

The porridge is always too hot (Orlando Cabrera), too cold (Alex Gonzalez), too something (Julio Lugo).

So, the eternal search continues. Is Jed Lowrie the answer or just another player taking his turn through the revolving door?

Let's see, since Nomar Garciaparra was traded five years ago, the starting shortstop parade has gone from Cabrera to Gonzalez to Edgar Renteria to Lugo to Lowrie to Nick Green and back to Lowrie again. That's a lot of turnover at a critical position for a team that prides itself on being a World Series contender every year.

You don't have to go far to hear some frustrated Red Sox fan ask why the club didn't keep either Cabrera (Renteria was thought to be better) or Gonzalez (couldn't hit, was injured a lot).

Like Goldilocks and the porridge, the Sox can't seem to find a shortstop who's just right, no matter how hard they try.

And it's not like the Sox have been afraid to spend money. They gave a four-year, $40 million contract to Renteria, then decided that he couldn't handle the job after one error-filled season. They handed $36 million to Lugo, and do we need to go into why that was such a foolish investment?

The Sox have reportedly reached a four-year $8.2 million deal with 19-year-old Cuban defector Jose Iglesias. He is a defensive whiz who has been compared to Ozzie Smith and Omar Vizquel, but Kiley McDaniel wrote in Baseball Prospectus recently that scouts don't think he'll hit enough to make it. And on and on it goes.

To hedge their bets, the club has also reached an agreement for nearly $2 million with 16-year-old Dominican Jose Vinicio, according to reports.

Iglesias, who bolted the Cuban national team at a tournament in Canada last August, and Vinicio might figure into the shortstop picture down the road. For now, the club has the surprising Green and the home-grown Lowrie. The best news is they no longer have the disappointing Lugo.

The Sox had hoped he would be a doubles-slashing, base-stealing, energy-providing offensive force with excellent range, if sometimes shaky hands at short. The Sox did win a World Series with Lugo, but whatever skills he had were noticeably absent when he came back from knee surgery this spring.

The odd thing is he never seemed to notice. After a game in May in which the Rays knocked out Jon Lester with an assortment of bouncers at and around the shortstop, Lugo talked about how he sometimes looks bad because he's able to get to balls that ordinary shortstops can't reach. We'll add delusional to his list of flaws.

Epstein admitted on Friday that signing Lugo was a mistake. Good thing he has forgiving bosses, because his boo-boo is going to cost the club about $13.5 million.

It wasn't like no one saw this coming. Everyone except the Sox front office seemed to know from the start that this was a bad signing.

The Sox were at least able to recoup some of their losses by trading Renteria, but Lugo has little value.

The Sox can't do anything really, but chalk up the whole affair to bad Chinese food or something and look to brighter days ahead with the Lowrie/Green duo. They might not be flashy, but they should at least be adequate.

Given the state of the shortstop situation just a few weeks ago, adequate will be an improvement.

Lowrie, lest we forget, was the 45th player taken in the loaded 2005 draft, selected three spots behind Clay Buchholz, whom he replaced on the Sox roster yesterday, and two ahead of Michael Bowden. The Sox took him with the pick they were awarded for Cabrera signing with the Angels.

"I remember the first time seeing him in spring training," Sox manager Terry Francona said last week. "The organization was like, we really want this kid to play shortstop - until he can't, which I agree with, too. Watching him play shortstop, it was like, `Wow, this kid has a lot of work to do.' We'll, he's done a lot of work, which is a credit to him and his managers. His footwork has come so far since the first time we saw him."

Francona called Lowrie's defensive play last year "steady," saying he not only made all the routine plays, but also showed some surprising range going into the hole.

He expects that Lowrie will be better offensively, especially from the left side (.222 last season, .338 from the right side) where his wrist injury seemed to take its biggest toll.

"He may not be 100 percent, he had a surgery," Francona said. "But I do think he's a lot stronger and the trend will continue going upward rather than the way it did last year and the beginning of this year."

The Sox might never get the porridge exactly right, but at least it seems to be tasting better than it did earlier this season.

Paul Jarvey can be reached at [e-mail].

NAME: BOSTON RED SOX