Red Sox Panic

The Boston Red Sox are cooked. They're a fourth place team that cannot compete with the athleticism of the Tampa Bay Rays or the big budget, loaded top-to-bottom roster of the New York Yankees. The offense is anemic, the rotation is overrated, the bullpen is a mess, and the much-ballyhooed defense is a disaster.

I don't believe any of these things. But it seems like I'm in the minority, as one or all of the above thoughts are the prevailing view of the Olde Towne Team at the moment. Have they played badly? Absolutely. But the grand proclamations that the very composition of this team was a mistake seem really premature to me. We're not even 30 games into the season, and the Sox have played a huge chunk of the schedule so far without their starting left and center fielders. They are getting sub-Buddy Biancalana production from the DH spot. Ace starting pitchers that are notorious slow starters have--shocker--started slowly! I'm not ready to flip the panic switch yet about any or all of these issues. Every team has concerns, and a few bad losses early magnify them.

Take, for instance, a club that looks, in some ways, a little bit like this one on paper. The team in question had three of their five rotation members post ERAs over 4.00, including two at 4.87 and 5.42. The top two set up men were each overworked to the tune of 70+ games with ERAs north of 4.00. The defense was so bad that a mid-season trade was required to stabilize the fielding at two infield spots. That one probably gives it away, but in case it doesn't, I'm talking about...the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox.

I know that the two iterations of the club actually have very little in common. The point I'm making is that it is easy to cherry pick stats to make just about any argument you want to, and it's even easier less than 20% into a season. Beckett and Lester are going to be fine. The DH production will improve, whether it's Big Papi hitting more or sitting more. The defense is the most troubling thing to me, because Adrian Beltre and Marco Scutaro have not shored up the left side of the infield like I thought they would, and since they are two guys I haven't actually watched a ton before this season, there is every possibility that they simply aren't the stellar fielders that their reputations had us think they were. The fact that Fenway's infield is horrible is certainly part of the issue. There's an old baseball cliche that defense doesn't slump but I disagree. I hope that it does, and that's what we've seen so far.

And they won 17-8 last night. You'd think after two championships in the last decade everyone could just relax a little bit. That's what I'm going to do.