Red Sox Part 1

Just so anyone (if anyone?) reading this knows I'm huge Boston Red Sox fan having grown up in Connecticut. For the previous six years I had worked for the Sports Network.com where I rose to the position of Senior Editor. During my time there I was in charge of all the official scoring for the 2004 minor league baseball season as well as serving as one of the head writers for Minorleaguebaseball.com for that season. Afterwards I served as the Fantasy Baseball Editor. I started this site to comment on the goes on of all of baseball. Not just the Red Sox. Any big story in baseball I hope to give my take on it. I think the best baseball writing always should try to have some humor to it so I'll try to include some. I'm just trying to learn how to use this so please forgive any mistakes that may occur at the beginning (like my double listing of the Sosa piece). So to begin with I'll start on a short review of the Red Sox offseason.

The Red Sox: I've been reading alot of reviews of the Red Sox offseason, most of which have been negative, and find myself scratching my head as to why. I loved the 2004 Red Sox team and probably always will (even Johnny Damon post-Yankees). I actually felt bad last year as the Boston fans were so critical of Keith Foulke, Curt Schilling, Mark Belhorn...etc. I still love those guys and in the future when they head to an old-timers game I'm sure they'll all head to Boston. That being said the Red Sox team at the end of last year was tired, bad fielding and in a slump.
So this offseason the Red Sox wanted to get younger, more athletic and better defensively. For the most part they have.
Catcher: Varitek as good as always except he seemed to tire down the stretch.

1B: Kevin Youkilis/J.T. Snow I think this is a huge improvement over the Millar/Orleud tandem was last year. Youkilis has been an OBP machine for years and certainly deserves a chance to start. His .805 OPS over a full season would have made him the fifth ranked 1B in the AL last year. A former/current thirdbasemen should certainly be better defensively at first. Snow is a awesome defensive player.

2B: Mark Loretta his numbers were down last season due to injury, but if heathly he's much consistent then both Belhorn and Tony Graffanino. Don't expect a return to his 2003 stats (.335/.391/.495 16 HR and 76 RBI) at 35, but he's very good on defense and leaving Petco Park should really help his offensive stats.

3B: Mike Lowell....??? He's very good defensively but his offense took a nose dive last season and don't know if I see him making a comeback. Leaving Pro Player Stadium should help his numbers but he really really fell off last season. If the Sox can get 10-15 HR's from him then they should be happy. I don't remeber which magazine I read this in this offseason, but in ranking AL thirdbasemen they rated Lowell 5th or 6th. Their reasoning seemed to be there had to be some reason why the Red Sox let Bill Mueller walk and assumed Lowell's 8 million per year salary. So clear up any questions anyone may have that reason was of Josh Beckett. Simple.

SS: Alex Gonzalez he's a great defensive player. He's terrible offensively. How terrible? He has a career OBP of .291. He doesn't steal bases, can flash occasional power and strikes out way, way too much. He's a decent player but you just don't expect too much from him. Still I think he'll be improvement over Edgar Renteria this year. Renteria, I feel bad I'm going to give him a bad rap here, never got comfortable in Boston after signing his huge 4 year $40 million dollar contract at both the plate and in the field. His 30 errors at short just aren't acceptable especially without any offense from the position. The Red Sox seemed to think that Edgar was going to return to his 2003 stats (.330/.394/.480 13 HR's 100 RBI) rather then his 2004 stats (.287/.327/.401 with 10 HR's and 72 RBI) which just wasn't happening. The best thing about Gonzalez is he's signed to a one year contract for $3 million. And on top of it it's unguarneeted so if he's awful in Spring Training they could cut him for $300,000. I'll be back tomorrow to go over the Red Sox DH and OF.