Julian Tavarez has had the right to take a few bows for the Sox this season.

Journal / Bob Breidenbach

Here it is late June, the Sox have a double-digit lead in the American League East and all is right with the world.

So why do they need Mark Buehrle, the White Sox left-hander who supposedly is on the block?

Pitching, that’s why.

And the fact you never have enough of it.

If there’s anything we’ve learned of the Red Sox’ great start is that baseball is all about pitching.

It’s easy to forget that. Chicks dig the long ball, right? And it’s not just chicks. It’s all of us. Home runs are sexy. Home runs get on postgame highlight reels. Home runs put people in the seats. Only the true purists want to see a 2-1 game, the kind of guys who memorize Baseball America and think that a well-pitched game is the kind of art that should hang in a museum.

The rest of us?

We want to see balls flying out of the park, runs going up on the scoreboard like some video game. We want to see guys jack it. Save those pitching duels for the old yellowed scrapbooks of baseball from some lost era.

It’s not just coincidence that the most hallowed record in all of sports is the all-time home run record.

And isn’t the reason given for the game’s resurgence back there in the summer of 1998 the fact that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hitting home runs at a record pace?

Isn’t the reason that A-Rod is often called the most talented player in the game is that he hits home runs?

So it’s always been the basic contradiction in the game, the fact that everyone likes offense but it’s pitching that usually wins.

Certainly it is why the Red Sox are winning now.

That must seem like some parallel universe if you are a longtime Sox fan, and grew up with teams that never had enough pitching, teams built to tattoo the left-field wall, teams that always scored runs but so rarely won. Teams that always seemed to have a fatal flaw, no matter how talented they were.

Not now.

For it hasn’t been offense that’s got the Red Sox to where they are today. Not when both Big Papi and Manny are below their usual home-run numbers, and J.D. Drew hasn’t hit, and Julio Logo is quickly becoming an embarrassment at the plate. It hasn’t been their offense that’s helped them build a double-digit lead in the American League East. It’s their pitching, the one thing so many Red Sox teams of the past never had enough of.

From the start of the season, it has been their consistently good pitching that’s given them the best record in baseball. Josh Beckett has been as good as any starter in the game, markedly improved over last year, no longer just trying to blow the ball by everyone. Dice-K already has won nine games in this his inaugural season in the major leagues, even if he began the season under a blanket of unbelievable hype, expectations as high as the moon. Wakefield has been Wakefield — up one minute, down the next — but almost always going deep into a game, taking the pressure off the bullpen. Julian Tavarez has been great, better than anyone had a right to expect.

And Big Schill?

Even if he’s no longer the ace he likes to think he is, he’s still won six games. And when the Sox had lost four straight, in the midst of their only swoon of the season, he took a no-hitter into the ninth inning, the kind of game that stops losing streaks, changes a team’s momentum.

Maybe it’s this simple: Teams are usually very good when their starting pitching goes deep into games.

The Red Sox starters do that.

Throw in a lights-out closer, and maybe the steal of the season in Hideki Okajima, and it’s no mystery why the Sox are where they are.

So why do they need more?

Simple.

Or as Terry Francona said a couple of weeks ago, “Just when you think you have enough pitching, go get more.”

And the Red Sox now face the rest of the season with a 40-year-old Schilling, who is currently on the disabled list, and whose performance tailed off in the second half of last year, and an aging Wakefield. Can they count on both of these guys to be as productive in the second half of the year as they’ve been the first three months?

You tell me.

And if they’re not, then what?

Is Jon Lester ready? How far away is reputed phenom Clay Buchholz, now in Double A?

The point is we can paint a scenario in which the Sox need another quality starter, whether now or next year.

That explains their interest in Buehrle, a quality 28-year-old left-hander. Is he great? No. Does he have number-one starter stuff? Probably not. But he’s a proven pitcher who has thrown at least 200 innings for six straight years and has won 93 games during that same stretch. He is someone who would add to the staff, a left-hander in the prime of his career.

This is not to say the Sox should mortgage the future for him. Buchholz is probably too much, and maybe PawSox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury is, too. And “need” is too strong a word. The Sox don’t need Buehrle, surely not in the way other teams might. But Francona was right a couple of weeks ago: When you think you have enough pitching, go get more. So now they should go get Buehrle, do something to make it work.

For you can never have enough pitching.

The American League East standings this morning tell you that.

As does Red Sox history.

breynold@projo.com