The Boston Red Sox return almost all of last year's World Series team so it's easy to see why they have a lot of high expectations.
Jason Varitek returns at catcher and remains one of the best hitters at his position, easily enough to make up for his less than stellar defensive capabilities.
Those defensive capabilities are greater than David Ortiz', of course, since he has none but he doesn't need them to continue to mash balls and scare pitchers from the DH spot.
Mike Lowell remains at third base and is probably the biggest candidate for a huge decline whilst Kevin Youkilis should remain solid at bat and in the field at first.
The middle infeld duo of Julio Lugo and Dustin Pedroia also returns and looks like the biggest hole in the lineup by a mile.
Oddly, neither player is particularly talented with the glove for their positions but will keep getting trotted out there.
Lugo, in particular is something of an offensive black hole - yes, he sucks - perhaps not as much as he showed last year when he was bitten with more than his share of bad luck on balls landing in gloves but he's still not a good hitter.
Pedroia, on the other hand, enjoyed a lot of good luck with his BABIP making his stats look respectable in 2007 but unless he has some surprising breakthrough he'll likely regress towards Lugo.
The outfield returns the incomparable (in many ways) Manny Ramirez, who stacks up with Ortiz to form probably the best 1-2 punch in any lineup at the moment, in leftfield and J.D. Drew opposite him in right.
Drew's already managed to miss time with an injury to nobody's surprise and it's likely that his numbers go down as years of playing cards whilst on the DL takes its toll on his baseball skills.
The only change the the starting lineup is Jacoby Ellsbury in centerfield taking over from Coco Crisp who immediately becomes the best fourth outfielder in the game whilst moonlighting as high-priced trade bait when he's not subbing for Drew's incapacities.
Ellsbury's a hot prospect but his short stint last season has over-rated him early. Last year's numbers are mostly a combination of small sample size and a freakishly lucky BABIP (Three-eighty-fricking-eight!) but he's only 24 and still improving. He'll be good, just not as much as the media would like us to think.
Aside from Crisp the other big news in players losing their spots was on the bench where Doug Mirabelli has been replaced by Kevin Cash as 'Varitek's backup. This was something of a surprise given that Mirabelli served as personal catcher to the team's knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield, but should have any huge effect offensively.
Veterans Sean Casey and Alex Cora round out the bench which looks pretty weak after accounting for Crisp spending most of his time starting in place of Drew or being traded away.
The hitting's pretty damn good, but perhaps a touch over-rated now and the defense sure looks horrible. Crisp is one of the best defensive centerfielders in the game but beyond that it's mediocre to awful unless Ellsbury gets moved to a corner (like when Drew's injured and Crisp comes in at center!)
The pitching could be a worry for the defending champs as well.
Due to the odd scheduling and roster rules surrounding their trip to Japan to open the season they are currently holding only four starters on the roster: Daisuke Matsuzaka who started the opener should be solid but not spectacular and the remainder of the rotation is a bunch of question marks.
Jon Lester continues his comeback from lymphoma but the warm fuzziness from that storyline has pretty much been allowed to obscure the fact that he's pretty much a league average pitcher.
Tim Wakefield is as unpredictable as a knuckler should be and assuming the loss of Mirabelli doesn't mean a thousand unearned runs on passed balls should be about average in the long run (with with a whole lot more deviation).
23-year old Clay Buchholz is the prize of the staff and also over-hyped after his no-hitter last year in just his second Major League start. Still, all the signs are that he'll be a pretty good pitcher in the long run but the Sox really need him to put it together right now.
The staff ace Josh Beckett is sitting on the DL right now with back spasms but should be activated in time to start Sunday's game restoring the rotation to five. Everything nice I can say about Beckett needs to be prefaced with "if healthy,..." (though in fairness he's logged over 200 innings each of the last two years for Boston. It's also worth noting that his walk rate plummeted last year and he's a reasonable candidate for a regression. Still, as the hero of two World Series now, they're going to be very glad to have him back this weekend.
Curt Schilling also waits on the disabled list but it is as yet unclear whether he will pitch at all this season.
Jonathan Papelbon remains the go-to guy as closer with the excellent setup tandem of Hideki Okajima and Manny Delcarmen giving the 8th inning a left-right punch.
With only four starters currently on the roster the bullpen goes very deep with Javier Lopez, Kyle Snyder, Julian Tavarez, David Aardsma and Bryan Corey rounding out the roster.
Lopez, Aardsma and Corey are all on the bubble though. One will be sent down to Pawtacket to make room for Beckett when he's activated paring the bullpen down to a more sensible size and another will go when veteran veteran reliever Mike Timlin is re-activated from the DL (finger laceration) probably next weekend.
In truth, Tavarez and Snyder would probably be better candidates for demotion based on ability alone but even they are pretty decent giving a lot of depth to Boston's relief corps. Unfortunately, there's a decent chance they may need it.
Rough estimates for offense: 830 runs scored +/-42 and defense: 760 runs allowed +/-38.
Pythag W-L based on those estimates would be:
High: 96-66
Medium: 88-74
Low: 80-82
Everybody returning, but will it lead to a return to the World Series...?
Up next: New York Yankees
