How Good Are the Red Sox?

Silly question to ask I guess considering they just won the world series and all. But they are in an extremely competitive division and despite my complaining about the enthusiasm of Boston and New York sports fanatics there is good reason they have the attitude they have. Despite the chinks and gripes I bullet below I think the Red Sox standing pat (bad pun) are good to go.

Boston has some chinks in its armor and I'll briefly go over the obvious:

• Shortstop needs to be upgraded. They went for a name, gave up big bucks and got burned. Lugo turned around and performed about as well as their former shortstop Alex Gonzalez did for about 4.5 million dollars a year more and probably did it while adding better defense than Lugo does. Lugo's above average seasons can now officially be considered a fluke. Maybe he's the kind of guy that can only play in cities where the home park is only half full or something because he sure could play as a D-Ray. Anyways, Boston has a terrible habit of trading away good young shortstops and trading for shortstops in or past their primes who's production dies somehow in fenway. My advice would be to blow up the shortstop position and just wait and be patient with the next shortstop prospect that comes up and play bit players there until then.
  

• Right field needs to be upgraded. Basically the Red Sox doubled what they paid to Trot Nixon to bring in approximately same production from J.D. Drew. I remember an article a few years back that just basically crapped on Nixon as the least productive right fielder in the AL. I still remember that article because it farted on Nixon so badly and was true. The article ignored Nixon's good points in that he did get on base handily despite his lack of power. Drew doesn't seem to be the droid Epstein is looking for but I'm not sure they can move 'soft bouncer down the first base line' Drew in trade given his price tag and rep. My advice would be to motivate Drew by bringing in someone to take his ab's against lefties away. Problem with that is he may not even care as this is most likely the last contract Drew is going to play for.
  

2006
G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO .BA .OBP .SLG OPS+

114  381   59  102  24  0   8   52   0  2  60  56  .268  .373  .394   96

140  466   84  126  30  4  11   64   4  2  79 100  .270  .373  .423  105

The above stats are courtesy of BR.  Trot is on top and Drew is on bottom.  I didn't compare the
same year. I took Drew's '07 in fenway and Trot's '06 in fenway.  It would kind of be unfair to
the comparison to take their performance in completely different parks and compare them.
This comparison makes the attempted upgrade in right field look like a complete loser for the sox.

• Get rid of Curt Schrilling. I thought that Doug Mientkiewicz was a selfish, egotistical, self-centered, and self-promoting, biatch until I clicked onto Curt schilling's website. The team is the last thing on Curt Schilling's mind. Curt Schilling couldn't concentrate enough to pitch if someone held a full-length sized mirror behind home plate because he'd be too enamored by his own reflection. It comes through in his little videos and his text posts. It comes through in a huge way when he talks about how much time he devotes to gaming and how he's using his money to develop a massively multi player online role playing game. I didn't know that when you get huge paychecks to play a children's game that you still had time to devote hours and hours to gaming. If I'd known that I'd have tried a lot harder at athletics. He's still a great pitcher mind you, but the Red Sox have great young pitching talent that is potentially blocked (I read somewhere they were even thinking of going to a 6 man rotation just so Buchholz can pitch and not have to be sent back down). Schilling's ego really belongs in New York somewhere.
• Concentrate on obtaining a new catcher. This one is kind of important as 'Tek ain't getting any younger. Also, the argument has been that he ain't the best guy for young pitchers to be pitching to but the team has won two world series titles under him so I'm not sure that whisper is all that credible. The Red Sox have many good young pitchers about to be up for good so might as well start grooming a real replacement for Varitek the young guys like to pitch to. With the crazy market for pitchers my advice would be to avoid the free agent market at all cost and trade for somebody else's prospect if you've got nobody close to being able to handle the job in Boston's system.
• Commit to your young pitchers that are ready for the majors. Define their roles and go with it instead of all the uncertainty. This dovetails nicely with my last point...
• Declare a closer and stick with it. You want Jon Appleseed-bom as your closer? Fine. Just stop himming and hawing about how you're going to use him. The Red Sox are one of those teams that really do need a dependable closer because of the level of competition they face day in day out in the AL Beast. There seems to be paranormal happenings that result in Red Sox Yankee games to be dramatic tide-turning events. That's what makes baseball great and sometimes agonizing to watch at the same time. My biased advice is to make Papelbon start and trade for the dodgers dynamite closer, Takashi Saito. You could have the first Asian set-up closer duo. In addition, Saito comes near minimum while yielding near minimum hits as a 38 year old. Lester could probably use some warmer weather.