2009 Season Preview: Boston Red Sox

The 2008 season for the Boston Red Sox ended on a sour note, losing 3-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays in game seven of the American League Championship Series. Though they could not repeat as World Series champions from 2007, they won an amazing 95 games in the regular season but ended up in second place to the Rays.

So will the 2009 Red Sox end up like 2008? Will they fare better? Let’s examine…

The Red Sox offseason began with the trade of outfielder Coco Crisp to the Kansas City Royals for relief pitcher Ramon Ramirez. Crisp was not the starting center fielder in the foreseeable future due to the emergence of the young and talented Jacoby Ellsbury. Ramirez will fit in with the rest of the Red Sox bullpen, along with Manny Delcarmen, Hideki Okajima, and Javier Lopez.

The Red Sox later signed MVP second baseman Dustin Pedroia to a brand new six-year extension. With the signing, the Red Sox avoided salary arbitration for the next few years and established Pedroia as the franchise second baseman for years to come. Boston also signed Kevin Youkilis to a four-year contract extension to evade arbitration with him too.

After Pedroia’s signing, the Sox went across the Pacific Ocean to make a deal by signing Japanese pitcher Junichi Tazawa. Tazawa, 22, will likely start off the 2009 season in the low-level minor leagues as a starting pitcher, but may change to a reliever as he advances through the system.

The Red Sox were in talks with the highly touted first baseman Mark Teixeira. Teixeira, young and powerful, deserved an enormous contract, but the Sox refused to negotiate with his agent, Scott Boras. Coincidentally, Teixeira ended up signing an eight year deal with the rival New York Yankees.

The rest of the Red Sox offseason was filled with a bunch of minor signings, mostly old veteran players, past their primes, to short contracts. Such players include outfielder Rocco Baldelli and pitchers Brad Penny, Takashi Saito, and John Smoltz. A lot of these are low-risk, high-reward contracts that may pay off in the long run.

Their offseason additions leave the roster full, but still some questions to ask.

Can team captain Jason Varitek improve at all? Varitek’s batting average was an abysmal .220, a career low. In fact, Varitek failed to hit above .260 in the past three years, topping out at .255. There is room to improve, especially since it is tough not to improve, but for the thirty-six year-old, it will be very challenging. Currently, the only replacement for Varitek would be Josh Bard, who hit .202 last season.

Can players like Mike Lowell and David Ortiz rebound from injury-plagued seasons in 2008? Lowell endured hip and back injuries throughout the 2008 season and when combined with his old age of 34, his downfall is inevitable. Lowell was not the player he used to be. He was playing for a new contract in 2007 and hit .324 in that season. In his 2008 campaign, Lowell’s batting average dropped .50 points, to .274.

David Ortiz, on the other hand, suffered a wrist injury early on during the season and it cost him valuable playing time and a diminished impact towards the Red Sox lineup. Ortiz’s wrist injury caused him to hit .264, his lowest batting average since his appalling days with the Minnesota Twins. The same goes for his slugging percentage (.507) and his on-base plus slugging percentage (.876). If Ortiz cannot rebound from his wrist injury, his glory days in Red Sox Nation may be long gone.

Now, let’s move on to the starting rotation. Josh Beckett still has the stuff, but it is now shown through his stats. His mediocre 4.03 ERA was his worst since he first pitched in the American League (5.01 in 2006) and still allows more fly balls than ground balls. Beckett no longer has to tolerate the pressure of being the ace of the staff with lefty Jon Lester, so that helps lessen stress.

But one of the real question marks in the Red Sox rotation is on Daisuke Matsuzaka. Matsuzaka has shown tremendous success in Japan before he came to the US. In the US, his stuff has not translated well.

Matsuzaka’s ERA was 4.40 in his rookie season; awfully high for someone who was said to be “the next Messiah” when he came to the US. “Dice-K” also allowed a large amount of homeruns (25) and walks (80) in his 2007 rookie season. In 2008, his ERA dropped to 2.90 and his homerun total went down by more than half (12). The main problem was Matsuzaka’s walk rate. In thirty seven fewer innings, Matsuzaka allowed 14 more walks, which meant his walks-per-nine rate went from 3.52 to 5.05, an appalling number.

Few questions need to be asked about the Boston bullpen. Closer Jon Papelbon has been dominating over the past few years with the occasional rough outing, but has been lights out. Hideki Okajima has also been a stable for the Sox, shutting down opposing hitters as they only bat .212 against him in 2008 (and .202 in 2007). Reliever Manny Delcarmen recorded eighteen holds in 2008 compared to the 11 in 2007.

With all of that said, how will the Boston Red Sox 2009 season fare? Some predictions may say first place; others may say third, but this prediction says the Red Sox will have a season eerily similar to that of 2008.

I predict the Red Sox to record 94 wins and a second place finish, but this time to the New York Yankees. Dustin Pedroia will not have an MVP-caliber season like 2008, but he will still put up quality numbers. Kevin Youkilis, Jason Bay, and J.D. Drew are also stables in the Red Sox lineup as they can fill voids left by other key players like Mike Lowell and David Ortiz.

Jon Lester will not have a season like last year (16-6, 3.21 ERA), but again, that is not putting him down. Lester will still pitch like a number one or a number two pitcher, but it was evidently seen that Lester was fatigued down the stretch last year with his 4.09 ERA. Lester’s inning total in 2008 (210.3) was nearly three-and-a-half times more than his inning total in 2007 (63).

The main focus for Boston would be the health of key players and to see whether or not players could rebound from shameful 2008 seasons.
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Tomorrow's article will be predicting the upcoming season for the Chicago Cubs.