“..it is very probable that, by the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view.”
-Friedrich Hayek

On Tuesday, CBS Sports released their outlook for the 2012 baseball season. Eight analysts and reporters predicted each division’s order of finish and when it came to the AL East, five picked the Red Sox to finish in third place. Reasonable enough, considering that’s exactly where they have finished in the preceding two seasons, and personnel changes for both the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays appear to have improved both clubs. Surprisingly, though, the other three analysts predicted the Red Sox to finish fourth. Not one of the eight thinks the Red Sox have what it takes to muster a runner-up finish in the AL East, much less a division title.

It amounts to a fascinating departure from just one year ago at this time. Heading into the 2011 season, seven of the eight members of the CBS baseball coverage team tabbed the Red Sox for first place, with one predicting them to finish in second. Nobody predicted third or fourth. At ESPN, 45 analysts had the Red Sox winning the AL East in 2011, 33 winning the World Series. This year? 2 and 1 respectively. Check out Hardball Talk. And Yahoo. And MLB Trade Rumors. The Red Sox are afterthoughts.

In the time between 2011 and 2012 predictions were due, the following took place: the Red Sox finished in third place, starting the 2011 season 2-10, ending it 7-20, and squeezing in a dominant 123-game stretch where they went 81-42. They were leading the AL East on September 1, 2011. Thanks in large part to Boston’s collapse, the Yankees cruised to a division title, and then in this past offseason added the services of Hiroki Kuroda and Michael Pineda, bolstering what was once a thin rotation. The Rays finished a game ahead of Boston, and then proceeded to tinker by adding bats like Luke Scott and Carlos Pena. In 2012 the Rays get to enjoy full seasons from the likes of Desmond Jennings and Matt Moore, too. Finally, to account for the scattered fourth place calls, the Toronto Blue Jays appear poised to contend one of these years. Some have them fast-tracked for 2012.

On its face, it’s a simple narrative. The third place team in the AL East for two years running endured considerable offseason chaos, thanks to a manufactured clubhouse controversy and the departure of Theo Epstein and Terry Francona. Boston hasn’t made splashy acquisitions like Kuroda or Pineda, and they don’t have youngsters joining the fray fulltime who are as good as Jennings, Moore, or Toronto’s Brett Lawrie. So, a prognosticator whose process entails factoring preceding seasons and a look at the offseason transaction log might understandably land on third or fourth place for the Red Sox.

Does an accurate forecast for the Red Sox necessitate a closer look at what did them in last season, though? After all, minus Jonathan Papelbon, they return the same core that compelled so many professional baseball media personnel to tab them as division and World Series favorites in 2011. And as of September 1st, they had met those expectations. They did go 81-42 for 123 games. That team, or at least its very best players, all return. Does a horrific 27-game stretch undo all of that?

That core consists of Jacoby Ellsbury, Adrian Gonzalez and Dustin Pedroia, who ranked second, fourth and fifth respectively among American League position players according to Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement in 2011. David Ortiz had a .953 OPS; the next closest DH who qualified for a batting title was over a 100 points behind Big Papi. It also consists of Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz. Among American League starting pitchers with at least 300 innings since 2009, Buchholz trails only Felix Hernandez in ERA+. Lester and Beckett rank 5th and 15th over that same time period for AL pitchers in B-Ref’s Wins Above Replacement. Firing on all cylinders, it’s the best trio this side of Halladay-Lee-Hamels. To sum it all up, there isn’t a better team in baseball when it comes to elite talent.

The 2011 Red Sox tripped up because they were top heavy; because players tasked with complementing Ellsbury, Pedroia, Gonzalez, Ortiz, Lester, Beckett and Buchholz faltered. Including Buchholz in that list is even a stretch, as he managed just 14 starts and under 83 innings pitched. But at least his work amounted to contributions. John Lackey and Tim Wakefield couldn’t say the same.

Lackey’s 6.41 ERA was ninth worst over the last ten seasons for starting pitchers with at least 25 starts. Despite finishing 98th in Major League Baseball in innings pitched, Lackey led MLB in earned runs allowed. In Wakefield’s 23 starts he yielded a 5.31 ERA. 72 Big League pitchers qualified for the ERA title in 2011 and not one of them had an ERA as bad as Wakefield’s was as a starter. Needless to say, Wakefield and Lackey inflicted lots of damage on the Red Sox’ hopes in 2011. And more to the point for how they impact Boston’s 2012 hopes, well, they won’t at all. Both Lackey and Wakefield have no chance of pitching even an inning for the Red Sox in 2012.

The staggering starting pitching woes didn’t end with Buchholz’s injury problems, Lackey’s batting practice sessions or Wakefield’s soft toss, either. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Andrew Miller and Kyle Weiland combined for 117.1 innings and a 6.07 ERA over 24 starts. Erik Bedard fell short of expectations after coming over at the trade deadline. And Lester, after three consecutive seasons of 200+ innings and an ERA+ of 139, fell short of the 200-inning mark and posted his worst season on a rate basis since 2007, a 123 ERA+. It would be difficult to overstate the extent to which Boston’s starting pitching fell short of what they needed, and were expected, to do. Did I mention the Red Sox won 90 games last season?

Offensively it would be too rosy to project a lot of improvement for Boston, since Ellsbury and Ortiz are prime regression candidates. Ellsbury’s breakout came out of nowhere while Ortiz isn’t getting any younger. Besides, Boston did have the best attack in the league. Offense was never the problem. Still, in left field, right field and at third base, the Red Sox can reasonably anticipate marked improvement. While Carl Crawford remains a question mark thanks to his wrist injury and concerning drop-off in 2011, some healthy variant of Crawford in 2012 combined with Cody Ross, Darnell McDonald, Ryan Sweeney and company are a near shoo-in to better Boston’s left field from last season. That same combo should also improve significantly on Boston’s right field from last year, a unit that was better only than the Seattle Mariners for production out of right. Remember now, J.D. Drew hit .222/.315/.302 and Mike Cameron hit .149/.212/.266 last year. Finally, at third, Kevin Youkilis may never again be the monster he was from 2009 to 2011, but he’s a great bet to improve upon his .258/.373/.459 line from 2011. Collectively, it’s an offense whose bear case has them right at the top of the league for productivity. The bull case could have them among the great offenses in team history.

It’s easy to fall into a trap of too slavishly quoting Wins Above Replacement and using it as an analytical catch-all or crutch. It’s happened in this space in the past. In this instance, though, the metric helps tell an important story. Let’s look at every player who played for the 2011 Red Sox but is either guaranteed or likely not to factor in 2012.

19 players, less than one “Win” combined. So the questions become: Can Ross, Sweeney, Mike Aviles, Nick Punto and Kelly Shoppach help with that 0.7 WAR they lost? Can Daniel Bard add more value tossing 140+ innings? Can Kevin Youkilis bounce back? What about Carl Crawford? Can Felix Doubront, Bard, Aaron Cook and Vicente Padilla help to improve upon the -2.4 WAR Wakefield and Lackey contributed over 51 starts? Think Clay Buchholz is a good bet to improve upon his 2011 output? Will Lester come in closer to 2008-2010, or did he take a permanent step back last season? The Red Sox have an elite, championship core; the very best in baseball. In addition to getting more out of key players like Youkilis, Crawford, Lester and Buchholz, Boston’s key to 2012 is solve for a complementary group that fell flat on its face in 2011. It appears they’ve done just that.

Questions remain, of course. If Ellsbury is a merely good player and not a perennial MVP candidate, that will hurt. If David Ortiz falls back a bit, would that surprise anyone? Aviles’s glove is a question mark. “Nick Punto, fulltime player,” is both terrifying and one injury away from a reality. Pedroia had career-best numbers in 2011, and Gonzalez’s productivity got a boost last season from an unsustainably high balls-in-play average. And of course, Papelbon is now a Phillie and Andrew Bailey won’t be available to pitch until after the All-Star Break. It’s not all good for the Red Sox.

But here’s what we know. The Red Sox return a team that fell one win short of the playoffs in a clownshow season where just about everything that could have gone wrong, did. They had liabilities up and down the roster that won’t factor at all in 2012. They’ve added players who are almost certain to offer contributions in excess of those their predecessors’ were able to muster in their respective roles. The Red Sox sleepwalked their way to 90 wins in 2011. With renewed focus on organizational depth, with the avoidance of gaping black holes sucking up playing time, and with added attention to supporting parts, the Red Sox should have no problem at all cruising to their first postseason appearance since 2009. If the Red Sox were a stock, it would be time to dust off the Behavioral Finance books and get as long as possible. The crowd might not love them but the fundamentals remain the same.

The Boston Red Sox came into the 2006 season a hopeful bunch. They had qualified for the postseason in 2005 but failed to win a game. The whole season felt a bit like a hangover from 2004. Curt Schilling made just 11 starts, Kevin Millar stunk, Mark Bellhorn’s productivity cratered, Keith Foulke had an ERA up around 6 and who could forget Edgar Renteria? So much seemed to go so wrong in 2005, but there they were right in the mix as always. It shouldn’t take too much to put them over the top in 2006, or so it went.

After the White Sox dismissed Boston so easily in the 2005 ALDS just one year removed from one of the great all-time postseason runs, chaos ensued. Theo Epstein left Fenway in a gorilla suit, Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington took the reins, and then ultimately Theo returned. There was great turnover on the field. Damon left for the Yankees. Millar and Bellhorn were gone. Center was now Coco Crisp’s, first base Kevin Youkilis’s and second base Mark Loretta’s. Boston also ditched the Edgar Renteria project in favor of a defense-first tandem of Alex’s, Gonzalez and Cora. Bill Mueller was gone. And most notably, the Red Sox sent Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez to the Florida Marlins for Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett. Joining Beckett in the rotation were Schilling, Matt Clement, David Wells and Tim Wakefield.

It was a promising plan. Crisp and Loretta were both two of the more complete players at their respective positions when they arrived in Boston. According to Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement, Crisp had been better than Damon and indeed the American League’s 8th best outfielder in 2004 and 2005, just his 24 and 25-year old seasons. From 2003 to 2005, by the same metric, only Marcus Giles and Luis Castillo were better than Loretta at second base in the Senior Circuit. Sure he was aging, but it was believed he would offer much-needed stability at second base. Youkilis had waited his turn and was ready for an everyday job, while Lowell was an accomplished player himself and a promising bounce-back candidate, even if billed as a necessary salary dump to make the Beckett acquisition possible. And, of course, mainstays Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Trot Nixon and Jason Varitek would return in place.

With these ostensible improvements to the starting nine, the Red Sox now just needed to patch up a run prevention unit that allowed 810 runs in 2005. Adding Beckett and returning a healthy Schilling seemed like a great way to achieve just that. The Red Sox had won 95 games in 2005 with their 5 leaders in Games Started Wakefield, Bronson Arroyo (who was dealt for Wily Mo Pena), Clement, Wells and Wade Miller. It seemed like the Red Sox recognized at once that they had both a base of talent coming off a 95-win season and also a need to transition if they were once again to be World Series caliber. The plan they executed before the 2006 campaign appeared to improve the team across the board and optimism reigned by the time Opening Day rolled around.

Well just about everything went wrong. Beckett got hit hard and finished the season with an ERA north of 5. Wakefield missed time, but still finished third on the team in innings pitched with 140. Clement and Wells combined for 20 bad starts. Jon Lester held his own over 15 starts and 81.1 innings but he was never really supposed to factor to the extent he did in 2006. He ended up 5th on the team in innings, and was diagnosed with cancer in September. 14 Red Sox made starts in 2006, and the bullpen ERA of 4.51 was symptomatic of a unit called upon too often.

Offensively, Loretta had the worst season of his career as a regular. Crisp OPS’d .801 in 2004 and 2005 combined, only to see that figure tumble to .702 in 2006. Nixon had a tough time staying healthy and his power stroke faded. Varitek hit worse than he had since 2000. The Alex’s hit as expected. The end result was 86 wins, a third place finish and the first time since 1997 that the Red Sox finished a season with a negative run differential.

As hopeful as the start of 2006 was, the aftermath of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 were dark days around the Red Sox.

Nick Cafardo’s cynical declaration that the Red Sox have once again prioritized offense at the shortstop position by opting for Mike Aviles over Jose Iglesias warrants a quick review of what a baseball position player’s job is. The player needs to create runs on offense and save them on defense. The player at his position who cumulatively does both best in a given franchise’s employ should see the most action on the Big League field. This shouldn’t be controversial, it shouldn’t be hard to understand, but here we are.

Jose Iglesias’s demotion amounts to prioritizing offense the same way Jon Lester pitching instead of Tim Wakefield amounts to prioritizing velocity. It paints an incomplete picture.

While consensus projections will have the Red Sox offense at or near the top of the league, there’s an equally cogent bull and bear case for that offense in 2012 as it relates to the 2011 attack. The bull would tell you that Carl Crawford is a shoo-in to improve off of his dismal 2011. He’d add to his case by explaining that even though neither is a superstar, the productivity Cody Ross and Ryan Sweeney figure to chip in will represent a marked improvement over what Boston right fielders contributed in 2011. Kelly Shoppach will offer stability behind the plate, Kevin Youkilis should be healthier and better, and Adrian Gonzalez’s shoulder has healed. That should help Gonzalez’s power numbers, which trailed off late in the season. Boston had the best offense in baseball in 2011, but it could be even better in 2012.

The bear would tell you that Boston won’t be getting as much from breakout star Jacoby Ellsbury in 2012, and that David Ortiz should slip given his age. It would be hard to argue with either contention, and since the two were such important parts of the Red Sox offense in 2011, it’s hard to see any way the Red Sox improve without Ellsbury and Ortiz in top form. In the middle infield you might also consider Dustin Pedroia a regression candidate and, with Marco Scutaro gone, Boston might lose a little pop at shortstop. And while we might all like to think Boston can pencil in more production from third base, Youk isn’t getting any younger.

Wherever you come down on how Boston’s offense figures to fare in 2012, I think somewhere very close to the top of the league in both runs scored and even park-adjusted measures is a reasonable baseline. It’s easy to forget thanks to consecutive Octobers at home, but the Red Sox boast an incredible collection of position players. Gonzalez, Pedroia, Youkilis, Crawford, Ortiz and Ellsbury have all played at superstar levels for extended periods during, or even throughout, the last three seasons. That being the case, the big question marks are on the pitching side.

With the additions of Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon, it’s clear that Ben Cherington spent plenty of focus on the bullpen. But given it was Boston’s downfall in 2011, how was Cherington able to take such a hands-off approach with his rotation? “Hands off” may not be a fair characterization since the Red Sox have in the mix retreads like Aaron Cook, Vicente Padilla and Carlos Silva, hangers-on like Felix Doubront and Justin Germano, and projects like Daniel Bard and Alfredo Aceves, but barring the addition of Roy Oswalt it will be these seven guys vying for two rotation slots. The other five will spread out between the bullpen and some sort of depth role racking up miles on the Pawtucket-Kenmore express.

So if Cherington wasn’t hands-off, he certainly wasn’t attacking the high-end of the market the way the Yankees did by adding Hiroki Kuroda and Michael Pineda. The question, with such glaring holes in the rotation, is “why?” The answer is best understood if you can appreciate the idea of addition by subtraction. We’ve covered this here before, but the Red Sox had 75 starts last year in which the five pitchers – John Lackey, Tim Wakefield, Andrew Miller, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kyle Weiland – posted a combined 5.89 ERA while allowing the opposition an .829 OPS. It’s hard to overstate just how bad that is.

In fully 46% of the team’s starts, Red Sox starting pitchers turned the entire opposing lineup into a collection of hitters on par with, oh, say someone like Ben Zobrist or Ryan Howard. Only ten pitchers who eclipsed the 100 inning mark in all of baseball managed to allow worse than an .829 OPS. One Major League pitcher – one – and that was John Lackey, allowed a 5.89 ERA or worse in at least 100 innings. His was 6.41. You can set that ERA threshold considerably lower, take it down to a 5.50 ERA and you only get three more names: Edinson Volquez, Danny Duffy and Jo-Jo Reyes. For 75 starts in 2012, the Red Sox sent to the hill some variant of the American League’s worst starting pitcher.

You can appreciate Cherington’s tempered approach when you consider the task before him: he needs to take a 90-win team and tack on another three, five, ten wins in order to make it the contender it ought to be. He needs to do so, too, within the budgetary reality that has nothing to do with Liverpool or anything else concerning external business entities. The Red Sox guaranteed ~$300 million to Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez last season, and in Lackey and Crawford and others have learned painful lessons about the perils of playing at the high end of the unrestricted free agent market. The Red Sox almost certainly will have the second highest payroll in baseball for 2012.

So Cherington and Manager Bobby Valentine have seven options for two slots, and they’re not asking much of the two guys who end up filling those slots, either, in order to improve on 2011. I don’t like to condense this analysis into a single number but in this case it’s illustrative. The Gang of Five who contributed those 75 starts in 2011 tallied a -2.6 WAR (b-ref) combined. For comparison’s sake, A.J. Burnett, the guy Brian Cashman is trying to get Pittsburgh to take off his hands, posted a +1.1 figure in 32 starts. So the mandate for the back end of the rotation is to be merely bad, like Burnett or Brian Duensing or Brad Penny bad. Just don’t be completely catastrophic the way Dice, Wake, Lackey, Weiland and Miller were last season.

Replacing abject liabilities with bottom-tier Major Leaguers actually accomplishes that modest objective. It hasn’t been the sexiest Red Sox offseason, but by eliminating starting pitching that has no business competing in Major League Baseball, and adding players likely to keep them in ball games, it may well have been an effective one.

This man will not be pitching for the 2012 Red Sox. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

According to Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement, every starting pitcher other than Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and Clay Buchholz that took the ball for the Red Sox last year contributed a combined 0.3 WAR. Seven players, 0.3 WAR. Zero point three. Here’s the list (sorry for the goofy formatting, I’m a dinosaur and can’t upload a Google doc in any sort of aesthetically decent way, apparently):

What makes this even more fascinating is that Alfredo Aceves accounts for 2.9 of that 0.3 figure, but only 21 of his 114 innings came as a starter, and they weren’t even very good innings. Take Aceves out of the picture and that’s -2.6 WAR, combined, from starters other than Lester, Beckett and Buchholz. So this sort of starts to become an easy calculation. If the Red Sox need to part with Scutaro (and a win or so) in order to free up money for Oswalt or Jackson, they’re looking at an upgrade of 4 or 5 wins. It’s even more if Gavin Floyd or Matt Garza are in the mix.

If I have one issue with the trade it’s that I would have thought Scutaro could have commanded more than what the Rockies sent back. I have no way of knowing the market, though, so I can’t get too worked up over it. The more common complaint is that the Red Sox are being cheap. If it doesn’t sit right with you that an organization as fiscally sound as the Red Sox needs to clear salary to make room for a player who will command a lot of money, I guess that’s your call to feel that way. As evidenced by one sports radio personality’s silliness yesterday, believe me, that mentality exists out there. In reality land, the Red Sox spend more than all but a team or two in Major League Baseball, and any functioning enterprise has to operate on a budget. That quibble aside, that the Red Sox should spend until Marc Bertrand’s happy, the calculus that likely went into this deal makes it a no-brainer: modest downgrade at shortstop for a major upgrade in the starting rotation.

Now let’s just make sure that upgrade in fact materializes.

J. Meric - Getty Images

A rumor emerged yesterday indicating the Red Sox had reached an agreement that would send Marco Scutaro to Colorado. It was unclear what the Rockies would send back, but the common thinking goes that the Red Sox need to clear salary for a Roy Oswalt (yay), Edwin Jackson (eh…) or someone else to fill that 4th starter role. The deal never materialized but the idea that there were talks seemed legitimate enough that it’s safe to conclude that Boston feels ok about parting with Scutaro. That notion carries with it some interesting implications.

First, it’s important to identify what the Red Sox have in Scutaro. As far as Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement goes, Scutaro has been baseball’s fifth best shortstop since 2008. He’s been better than Jeter, better than Rollins. He’s 36 this season, so a precipitous performance drop-off is possible, but he stands to make just $6 million. That figures to be a terrific deal for Boston. And since it’s a terrific deal for Boston, it means Scutaro has value on the open market. Teams should be interested in him. He’s productive, steady, and affordable on just a one-year commitment.

If the Red Sox are open to parting with Scutaro for the purpose of clearing salary, it means a number of things. One, some sort of commitment is likely coming to a pitcher that’s not inexpensive. Two, since the deal would be financially driven, the “other shoe” will likely not come in the form of a blockbuster deal for a replacement shortstop like Florida’s Hanley Ramirez. Three, the Red Sox would be right to command a healthy return for Scutaro. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, it means the Red Sox are likely comfortable heading into 2012 with some combination of Mike Aviles and Nick Punto holding down shortstop.

Can you imagine a championship aspirant club having a go with Aviles and Punto playing such a crucial position? You can almost hear the BP 1.0 crowd licking their chops. Rany can expand on his Bill Smith/Ben Cherington comparisons, Joe can fire up his Twitter account and/or newsletter (anyone ever read one of those?) and spew condescension, KG can remind us Ryan Sweeney isn’t an all-star again. Did you guys know that Jose Iglesias isn’t much of a hitter, by the way? You get the point. Get ready for it if Boston deals Scutaro.

What’s more interesting is an examination of what Red Sox fans might be able to expect from Aviles and Punto. First, Punto. He’s become a punch line in SABR circles but take a look at his numbers. There’s no questioning that he’s been incredibly awful at times. In 2009 playing for Minnesota he hit .228/.337/.284 in 440 plate appearances. He’s also shown flashes of productivity. He had a 3.2 bWAR season in 2006, 2.1 in 2008 and last season he hit .278/.388/.421 in limited action for the reigning champion St. Louis Cardinals. Whatever he brings off the field aside, Punto has two strengths. He tends to log good at bats (he walked five times in 19 plate appearances in the World Series), and he has a very good glove. At his best, Punto can probably come close to replicating Marco Scutaro. At his worst, playing every day, it’s likely his defectiveness would sink any team’s ambitions.

Fortunately if Scutaro goes, Aviles can carry some of the load at shortstop, too. Aviles is sort of the opposite of Punto. He’s a career .288/.318/.419 hitter who hasn’t stuck at shortstop probably because it’s a bit of a stretch for him in the field. But who knows? He was a Royal, an organization not exactly known for its deft handling of players, and maybe he would have made for a perfectly fine shortstop. While Punto sees pitches and fields well, Aviles, through a more free-swinging approach, offers better output with the bat thanks to his solid slugging numbers but would likely be something of a liability on defense.

Sticking with Baseball-Reference, here is how the three stack up in terms of WAR/600 PA over the course of their respective careers:

Scutaro: 2.52
Punto: 1.60
Aviles: 1.81

Scutaro is significantly better than Punto and Aviles, or whatever combo that duo could likely produce. The calculation the Red Sox would be making, though, is that the available upgrade at 4th starter plus the return Scutaro could net would be well worth the win or so they would lose out on at shortstop. It makes some sense to me. Hopefully it does to you, too. It will make another chapter in the Offseason of Red Sox Flogging all the more tolerable.

Is the sun setting on the Red Sox?

Coming off of a 97 win, 101-Pythag win season in which the New York Yankees ran away with the American League East, the Bombers last night added Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda. They did so, too, by giving up almost nothing from the roster that buried the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox last season. They did give up a major part of their future in Jesus Montero, but his explosive September debut aside, Montero did very little for the 2011 Yanks. Montero’s is an impressive bat that was poised to make an impact in 2012, but in parting with the youngster the Yankees have turned a patchwork rotation into a very good one, all in a night’s work. The Yankee optimist, factoring improvement from Mark Teixeira and health from Alex Rodriguez, could hardly be blamed for dreaming of a 105-win 2012 campaign.

Elsewhere in baseball’s toughest division, almost all along during Tampa Bay’s impressive four-year run, 2012 has been the season for the Rays where everything seemed to be lining up. Studs Desmond Jennings and Matt Moore are now in the mix full-time, Evan Longoria and Ben Zobrist have settled in as superstars, and they bring back a rotation that boasted the lowest ERA in the American League in 2011 – a rotation that Moore stands to improve in the upcoming campaign. The Rays window isn’t necessarily closing, but if you had to pick their year this one would probably be it.

For good measure, add to this backdrop that the Toronto Blue Jays are now a fully functioning baseball operation and the fact that, two years running, the Red Sox have finished in third place. In 2011, they descended sharply into third after as dominant a 120-game stretch as the team experienced in a long time, famously collapsing in September. The impossibly idiotic hysterics of Boston’s media climate in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 season aside, one can understand the Red Sox fan’s concern for both the 2012 season and beyond. Their AL East foes, Baltimore aside, are all making one move after another to get better.

The narratives and projections for 2012 in the AL East are becoming just about as ingrained, repetitive and familiar this offseason as they were last offseason, when everyone with a keyboard had the Red Sox running away with the division. In the immediate aftermath of last night’s trade, the Yankees became the “favorites” to win the division according to SI writers Cliff Corcoran and Joe Sheehan. After the Matt Moore extension, it was just one more example of how super-duper Andrew Friedman is. Days later, Jonah Keri even felt compelled to remind the Oakland Athletics that they’re at no competitive disadvantage at all since the Rays are like good and stuff. And Rany Jazayerli, also on Grantland (the site that was to elevate long-form sports writing as we know it…heh), wrote a piece so negative about new Red Sox General Manager Ben Cherington that he needed to insert a sentence assuring readers that he didn’t mean to imply Cherington was “a dolt or incompetent.” What a difference a year makes.

So where do the Red Sox stand? They’re clear underdogs, or so it goes, and here’s what being an underdog looks like. It means returning baseball’s best offense with a chance to make significant improvements. Boston’s bats managed to accomplish all they did while lugging around the least productive right field in either League, with very little from Kevin Youkilis and a .289 on-base percentage from Carl Crawford. In 2012, Ryan Sweeney enters the mix in right field to form a decent little platoon with Darnell McDonald and/or Mike Aviles, Youkilis is healthy by many accounts and Crawford, humiliated by 2011, is as determined as ever. Improvement is no shoo-in when you’re atop the league, but these aren’t exactly stretches, even if you’d care to forecast some regression for Jacoby Ellsbury and David Ortiz.

Of course it’s not the offense that accounts for the consensus bearish outlook on the Red Sox. It’s the rotation and, to a lesser extent, the bullpen. Let’s focus on the rotation. In 2011, the Red Sox had an “awful at baseball” problem. John Lackey, Tim Wakefield, Andrew Miller, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kyle Weiland contributed 441.2 innings of 5.89 ERA pitching over 75 starts. They were awful at baseball. So, Cherington’s trick this offseason is to turn his potent offense into a luxury, or a means of creating meaningful separation, not the necessity it was in 2011 that had to pick up an awful run prevention unit in order to win games.

So how do you go about replacing 75 starts of 5.89 ERA pitching? The good news is that there’s no need to blow out the budget. We’re not setting the bar very high here, remember. First, you hope Clay Buchholz returns healthy and the reports so far on that score are terrific. Next, you see who else you have in-house who might be able to help. Dan Bard wants to try his hand as a starter? No problem, go be better than Weiland. Alfredo Aceves? Why not? Try to improve on Lackey. And then you need insurance. Aaron Cook and Carlos Silva come to Fort Myers with battle scars and some shitty peripherals but with Boston’s solid defense and explosive offense, strikes and innings will do just fine, thanks, if it turns out one of the two is needed. Finally, the offseason is not over. Maybe Roy Oswalt, Joe Saunders or even Edwin Jackson (at the right price) can offer some help. These aren’t big splashes, but Boston did big splashes last season. Really, they’re no guarantee at all. Remember scoffing at Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia before both pitchers made significant contributions to a Yanks squad that dusted Boston by seven games in 2011?

Each name mentioned in the preceding paragraph is meant to slot in after the team’s top two of Josh Beckett and Jon Lester. Both are known as big-time competitors and both have to answer for some serious character questions that surfaced last season. If you accept that they’re both proud and serious professionals, it’s no leap to hope, or even expect, strong performances in 2012. As established as the two may be, they have something to prove again this season. That works in Boston’s favor.

Given the hyper-competitive American League East, Ben Cherington’s first offseason posed daunting challenges on the one hand. On the other, he needed to take a 90-win team laden with stars and simply replace his closer and a lot of dead weight. Andrew Bailey, Mark Melancon, Sweeney, Aviles, Kelly Shoppach, Ryan Lavarnway, Cook, Silva and I imagine more to come, in aggregate, just need to offer below average contributions instead of devastatingly awful ones in order to help the Boston Red Sox stay in the thick of things. And if they get lucky with a couple of them the way New York did with Colon and Garcia, the consensus prognostications of this offseason may look just as silly as last offseason’s.

Beginning tomorrow, almost all of the Red Sox content Marc Normandin, Matt Kory and I produce will show up at Over the Monster, SB Nation’s Red Sox blog. The Beacon has only been in existence for nine months or so, and it’s not going anywhere, but we’re excited about the chance to analyze Red Sox baseball for a much broader readership. What follows is our rationale for the move, and our vision for this site moving forward.

We’re really excited about where SB Nation is headed directionally. Jeff Sullivan and Rob Neyer are doing a terrific job on the SB Nation Baseball front page and some of our very favorite team sites sit in the network, including OTM. Personally, I have no commercial aspirations at all when it comes to baseball writing, but if I am going to take time to do it, I’d rather people read my work. Traffic numbers were impressive given how young we are here at the Beacon, and the trend was our friend, but OTM offers many, many more eyeballs. Moreover, we find SB Nation’s multiple rounds of venture funding from some of the most reputable early stage investors out there affirming.

As for this site, we plan to have it live on as Boston Sports Beacon. We have many details to work out, and the site’s direction will probably change dozens of times in the coming months. But the vision is clear: we want to be a choice destination for thinking fans interested in the Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots, Liverpool FC, the New England Revolution, those random bocce courts over in the North End, Boston College, the Deutsche Bank Championship, local golf more generally, the Boston Marathon, Hockey East, The Head of the Charles, you name it. If it’s sports related, has anything to do with Boston and there’s a thoughtful or provocative angle to be fleshed out, we want to be on it. There won’t be much structure for a while, but, slowly but surely, we’ll amass quality content. If we can tackle the content component, from there, the format will take shape.

In order to execute against this plan, we of course need contributors. I have a Celtics piece swirling about in my head that hasn’t had a home. Now it does. If you’re like me at all in that you love Boston sports, you love thinking about Boston sports, and you’d like to write about Boston sports, hit me up (redsoxbeacon at gmail dot com). I’d love anyone interested to come forward. We will probably start with some Bruins coverage in the coming days and take it from there.

Red Sox Beacon has been a lot of fun. We started this place because we thought there was a bit of a gap in the Red Sox blogosphere. Now, at OTM, we get to write for many more people. Meanwhile, the Beacon isn’t going anywhere. Keep checking back if other Boston sports interest you.

Thanks, everybody.

I was noodling around the internets and decided to look at the Fan Graphs Red Sox player page. The WAR list is instructive for those of us who don’t want to break things down beyond a single stat, or at least don’t at that time. Just for fun, here are the top five and bottom five Red Sox by WAR. It should be noted that at the writing of this article Fan Graphs had not yet updated their data to include Sunday’s two games. Where possible I’ve added in necessary data myself. (If you want to read more about WAR and how Fan Graphs calculates it you can click here.)

1. Adrian Gonzalez (2.1 WAR) – Gonzalez has been every bit the player Red Sox fans hoped he’d be when the team acquired him this past off-season. His is the highest slugging percentage and OPS on the team, and he’s second to David Ortiz in homers. He’s getting on base, hitting for average, hitting for power, and doing an excellent job at first base. His BABIP is on the high side (.368), but at least anecdotally I haven’t noticed many cheap hits off his bat. The one negative is his base running, but we already knew he was a very slow runner. Considering the whole package, this is a minor quibble.

2. Kevin Youkilis (1.9 WAR) – Youk being Youk. Obscene walk rate coupled with tons of power. Defensively he isn’t the same caliber as he was at first base, but he’s holding his own at third and I’d expect some improvement as the year goes along. Also the fact that he moved allowed the Sox to get the one player above him on this list, so there is that. We should all be able to put up with slightly lesser defense at third for that kind of payout.

3. Josh Beckett (1.9 WAR) – If there has been one huge positive surprise for the Red Sox this season, it’s been 2007 Josh Beckett showing up here in 2011. Beckett is due for some regression (low BABIP, high LOB%) but even with that, he’s been pitching wonderfully. His strikeouts are up, his walks are down, and his xFIP is 3.30. If he has a 3.30 ERA at the end of the year I think we’d all take it, but the first two months of the season, the ones with a 1.80 ERA, are already in the bank. If he throws 3.30 ERA ball the rest of the way he’s going to be in the Cy Young discussion.

4. Jacoby Ellsbury (1.9 WAR) – This is the player I get the sense the Red Sox were counting on having last year before the human bowling ball started breaking ribs indiscriminately. His walk rate isn’t amazing, but it is as good as Adrian Gonzalez, what ever that means. In happier news, Ellsbury is getting on base (mostly via batting average) and perhaps most shockingly, he’s hitting for power. Six homers and fifteen doubles have pumped his slugging percentage up to .462, fifty points above his career number. As always his defense in center isn’t great, but with Crawford in left and Drew in right he’s protected at least somewhat. The power is what stands out for me though. If his batting average drops over the course of the season but he still maintains his power, he’s going to be a very valuable player.

5. Dustin Pedroia (1.6 WAR) – This surprised me. Pedroia is having a tough time at the plate. Although he’s showed some signs of improvement recently, he’s striking out at about twice his career rate (up to 19%). His batting average is down and his slugging percentage is in the toilet. So why is he here? Defense. Pedroia is playing some of the best defense of his career (according to Fan Graphs). He’s a second baseman and defense at second is important, thus here he is. Imagine how good he’d be if he was hitting.

And now the ignominious five. We’ll count down for these…

5. John Lackey (0.0 WAR) – We’re all pretty familiar with Lackey’s struggles. His family life has been quite difficult and sadly distracting for him, but that doesn’t change the fact that his pitching has been awful. He’s on the disabled list with a strain in his elbow which has reportedly improved. Supposedly the elbow problems were making it difficult to follow through and finish his pitches leading to pitches up in the zone and off speed pitches that didn’t break like they were supposed to. If he’s healthy he should go back to being the number four starter we all hope we don’t get stuck with when we get Red Sox tickets. If not, I imagine he’ll be back on the DL in short order.

4. Jason Varitek (-0.1 WAR) -Varitek’s putrid offensive performance is the only thing that saved Jarrod Saltalamacchia‘s job in the first month of the year. It’s hard to overcome a month of hitting .111, but to his credit Varitek is trying. He’s been hitting better in May by a long shot, though it’s safe to say a dead moose could improve on Tek’s numbers if you stapled a bat to it’s hooves and dragged it’s carcass to the plate. Catcher defense is as always incredibly difficult to quantify, but pitchers seem to still enjoy throwing to him.

3. Darnell McDonald (-0.2 WAR) -  With Mike Cameron‘s healthy return and the advent of the Carl Crawford Era in Boston, McDonald has become an afterthought. He hasn’t made it any better for himself when, on the few occasions he’s been called upon this season, he’s fallen flat. In 23 plate appearances he has three hits and his most memorable moments so far have come from being thrown out on the bases. Getting thrown out after over-running second base against Cleveland in the ninth inning as a pinch runner still sticks in my craw. With McDonald’s role as King Reserve Outfielder assumed by Cameron I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before he’s sent packing.

2. Dan Wheeler (-0.2 WAR) – Wheeler has been either injured or awful. In limited time on the mound he’s given up four homers (and an additional one during his minor league rehab). He still cannot get lefties out, a weakness his previous team, the Rays, did a good job of concealing. Wheeler is basically an effective ROOGY and nothing more so if Terry Francona gets the idea in his head to keep him in against a lefty, my advice is either change the channel or go grab seconds on nachos in the kitchen. It’ll be over soon enough. If used correctly Wheeler can be a solid addition to the pen. He’s not this awful.

1. Mike Cameron (-0.3 WAR) – Better players have fallen off a cliff sooner, but Cameron’s three homers show he can still run into one from time to time. The issue is the rest of his game. He’s not getting on base or hitting for average, though he should keep his roster spot simply by the fact that he’s better than Darnell McDonald. Even at 38 he still has speed and if something happens to one of the Sox starting three outfielders he should still be a good fill in because, well, he can’t really be this bad, can he?

image courtesy of Pegasus News

This past week Steven Goldman of Baseball Prospectus (and former guest on the Beacon Podcast) wrote an article about, well, RBI whores. It’s quite the read, and not only because it employs copious usage of the word ‘whore.’ An RBI whore, in case you were wondering (I was) is a player who greedily attempts to collect RBIs. The theory goes that a walk is less valuable with runners in scoring position because, unlike putting the ball in play, it fails to move runners along or score them unless the bases are loaded. A good RBI whore will swing at more pitches, enlarge his strike zone, in attempt to drive in those runners, and yes, it’s certainly a strange concept. The hypothesis of Mr. Goldman’s piece can be summed up in the following quotation:

…the whole concept of the “RBI whore” is questionable, because when is a player trying not to drive in a run in an RBI situation?

I agree. That a player would enlarge his strike zone when runners are on base in attempt to move them over or score them is plausible in theory but self defeating in practice and, I think, a flawed one on several levels.

First, the physical. Hitters go up to bat looking for certain pitches, a slider outside, a fastball in, a curve, or what have you. Asking a hitter to swing at just about anything is tantamount to telling him to close his eyes, count to three, then swing. It’s essentially at-bat suicide. Hitting is about timing and balance and it’s almost impossible to have both while simultaneously looking for fastballs off the plate and off speed pitches in. I’m sure there are exceptions (Manny Ramirez comes to mind) but I think this paragraph adequately describes most major league hitters. But, as I neither play professional baseball nor speak regularly with those who do, I very well could be wrong and as such I’ll concede that point.

However, I don’t think there are any hitters in Major League Baseball, including Bobby Abreu, who go up to bat thinking “I’m going to try to walk.” They may be thinking ‘take til strike one’ or ‘ignore the curve ball, this guy probably can’t get it over’ but you can’t survive against major league pitchers with that type of overly passive mindset. Walks are often a product of a batter’s skill in both knowing the strike zone and pounding anything that comes within it. Pitchers are less likely to enter the zone if a hitter is more likely to crush that offering.

A hitter’s personal strike zone is often determined by what kind of pitches he can handle. If a guy can’t hit balls on the outside corner, taking those pitches is probably the best strategy. Asking a hitter to hit pitches on both sides of the plate or even beyond the plate, stretching his strike zone, is asking that hitter to fail. Asking a hitter to swing at pitches outside the zone is asking him to give up his biggest strength.

As an example, David Ortiz said that the biggest difference between this year (he’s hitting about .300/.400/.500) and the last two when he was less effective is his pitch selection. Namely, he’s not swinging at pitches he can’t hit because once the pitcher knows the hitter will extend his zone that hitter’s chances to get a hit just took a hit.

Sabermetrics has traditionally embraced patience in hitters because of the importance of on-base percentage. But there is another reason patient hitters tend to be more valuable. They don’t get themselves out by swinging at pitches they can’t, as the kids say, barrel up. Sometimes a pitch is a strike but isn’t hittable anyway. Other times a pitch is close but wouldn’t lead to good contact and the smart hitter will take the strike and use the rest of the at-bat to crush something. There’s no reason to swing at that pitch unless you can do something with it.

But back to RBI whores. Is there such a thing? I suppose there could be, but as I said above, it strikes me as self-defeating. It strikes me as especially odd for a manager to instruct a player in the ways of RBI whoring. Certainly there are times when one run is required to win the game, but even in that instance I would argue if a hitter is going to alter a his approach, the right strategy is to shorten up the swing and/or to choke up on the bat and attempt to put the ball into play. The hitter who tries to turn himself into Vlad Guerrero with a runner at third and one out is more likely to fail than to succeed.