(Image Care of Boston Public Library, Print Department)

Previously on Smokey Joe and the Time Bandit-

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

Ryan O'Malley was in the midst of recounting to me the tale of how he woke up one morning having accidentally slipped into the year 1912. After witnessing the first ever game played at Fenway Park, the time traveler and his new friend boxing writer Jimmy Hagerty set off for the fame Third Base Saloon.

O' Malley went on-

"Hagerty and I caught a street car that wound through an unfamiliar looking stretch of roads. I trusted my companion to lead the way. During the trolley ride I tried my best to remember anything I could about baseball in and around 1912. I raced through every history of the game I could remember, searching for things that may help me make a quick buck. Still, I remembered little that would have separated me from a casual baseball fan in 1912. I knew very few names from the Red Sox team I had just watched and I concentrated hard on asouvenir scorecard I had picked up on my way into game.

Future hall of famers Tris Speaker and Harry Hooper were familiar to me, of course – as was Smokey Joe Wood - I had heard of left fielder Duffy Lewis before and I remember some, maybe Bill James, claiming the outfield of Hooper, Lewis and Speaker was the best of its time. Manager first baseman Jake Stahl’s name sounded vaguely familiar, though I later realized I had him confused with Chick Stahl.

I went over and over the names. The players were all pictured around the edges of the score sheet, sketched in that old tobacco card style with a banner under them showing their name.. I scribbled their positions as best I could during the game, but the lack numbers on the players’ uniforms made it more difficult than you might think. Scanning the players’ names, I recognized one other name and a wave of guilt crashed over my plan to gamble on baseball. Pitcher Eddie Cicotte, who would help throw the World Series seven years into the future, stared back at me from the card.

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From the first at bat, the Red Sox had their power stroke working against Joe Blanton and the Phillies tonight. Jon Lester continues to pitch just alright, getting by without his typically strike out stuff. The best thing about this win, however, is that it immediately follows a loss. For a team that has been winning and losing in long streaks, getting back in the win column right away is a relief.

Mike Aviles, Will Middlebrooks, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and David Ortiz all went deep off Phillies starter Joe Blanton. Aviles home run came on in the first at bat of the game. Middlebrooks and Salty went back to back in the fourth and David Ortiz hit a two run blast in the fifth. The ball was definitely carrying, but none of the Red Sox home runs were of the cheap variety. Saltalamacchia’s and Ortiz’s were good enough to get out anywhere and Aviles and Middebrooks both hit the ball just off of center.

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Jon Lester has dominated the Phillies in the three games he has started at Citizens Bank Park. He looks to continue that dominance against Joe Blanton tonight. Let's see if Mr. Blanton tries to sneak another fastball by Daniel Nava tonight.

Jon Lester

#31 / Pitcher / Boston Red Sox

Height: 6-2

Weight: 240

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Jan 07, 1984

Joe Blanton

#56 / Pitcher / Philadelphia Phillies

Height: 6-3

Weight: 245

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Dec 11, 1980

The Boston Red Sox have won a tough game against a strong opponent. This one was just about as nerve-racking and vicious as they come. Both sides missed opportunities to break the game wide open and Red Sox and Rays pitchers had to find their way out of trouble all night. In a season that has been characterized by difficult, infuriating losses, winning a game like this comes as a relief and possibly even lets us hope again, if just a little bit.

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Heading into the season, Matt Moore was one of the top 3 prospects in baseball. Felix Doubront was not as well regarded. He was not regarded at all actually. So it is not surprise that Moore leads Doubront in every pitching category except wins, ERA, FIP, xFIP, K/9, BB/9, HR/9...wait. I guess that is surprising. Surprising and awesome.

Moore and Doubront go head to head tonight as the Red Sox try to split this two game series in Tampa Bay and return to playing winning baseball

Felix Doubront

#61 / Pitcher / Boston Red Sox

Height: 6-2

Weight: 165

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Oct 23, 1987

Matt Moore

#55 / Pitcher / Tampa Bay Rays

Height: 6-2

Weight: 205

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Jun 18, 1989

Starting pitching is a major weakness for the Boston Red Sox right now. Josh Beckett has been giving up home runs at a prodigious rate and Clay Buchholz has been an unmitigated disaster so far. While first year starters Daniel Bard and Felix Doubront have been above average by FIP (FIP- 86 for both), neither looks good by the more conventional ERA metric (Bard ERA- 118, Doubront ERA- 125). The most disturbing issue with the rotation might be Jon Lester, however.

Lester was expected to be an ace and to match up well against any of the top pitchers in the league. After making his seventh start, he looks more like an average mid-rotation guy. He has an ERA- of 102 and he is only slightly better by FIP- at 91. On his career, he has an ERA- of 80 and a FIP- of 82. This run of average performances is almost entirely the result the result of a dramatic drop in his strikeout rate. From 2009-2011, Jon Lester was one of the top strike out pitchers in the game, his 9.43 K/9 ranking eighth in baseball, just ahead of Justin Verlander. Yes, that Justin Verlander. On his career, he has a rate of 8.30 K/9, but thus far in 2012, he is striking out just 6.00 per nine. Slow starts are nothing new for Lester, but this one is particularly extreme.

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As I have done before here at OTM in preparation for the series against the Cleveland Indians, I did a little Q & A about the Tribe with friend of the blog and Indians expert Lewie Pollis, who covers them for Wahoo's On First and also writes at the former home of our own Marc Normandin, Beyond the Boxscore. The Indians are one of season's surprises, leading the AL Central by two games over the highly favored Detroit Tigers and Mr. Pollis tries to explain why it will stay that way.

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On this off-day for the Red Sox, we continue our strange tale of the temporally displaced Ryan O'Malley as he tries to make his way through the world of 1912. When we last left our hero he was wrestling with impending Titanic tragedy and the first exhibition played at Fenway Park.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

"Now, I don’t want you to think that I completely forgot about the impending tragedy just to see a baseball game," O’Malley explained. His face reflected the guilt and conflict he obviously felt at that time, being the only man on earth with the absolute knowledge of the ship’s impending doom. "I simply decided that there was little more I could do other than to reach out to the ship or the shipping company and issue as firm a warning as possible. I was fortunate to find a Western Union telegraph station rather quickly and after some time I convinced the operator to send a telegraph to the ship’s captain, despite the fact that I did not know his name or anything much beyond the name of the boat. It read:

"Exercise Great Caution. Large Threat of Icebergs Of Canadian Coast. Yours, Robert Doerr, US Maritime Safety Office"

I couldn’t help but smile at my companion’s choice of pseudonym, but I had to ask.

"Did you really think that would stop the ship from sinking?"

"No," he answered. "Of course, not, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I should stop it, and even if I had been, I doubt I could have done much more. Understand, while we may know what did happen, we can never know what could have happened. Suppose I succeeded in preventing that tragedy, but as a result, no greater safety regulations were adopted and more, even larger ships sank without life boats. Or perhaps the long term consequences were even worse. Imagine as a result of that heroic act a chain of events began that would lead to the Nazi developing the atomic bomb before they could be defeated in World War II. These are terrifying enigmas I was grappling with. Perhaps such horrors were already set in motion, I had thought, and that is when I decide to at least take some small action."

"So, I sent the absurd imitation of an official warning. Perhaps, I thought, this is the reason I am here," O’Malley rationalized.

That question of why this had happened to him never seemed far from his mind and I began to see that this detailed retelling was a much for his own benefit as for mine. He was wrestling with the experience and he did not appear to be in the lead. These moments when he was forced to reflect on such great cosmic issues blackened his otherwise cheerful mood and I decided it may be best to try to skirt them in the future.

"It wasn’t the reason," he said. "As you know."

He fell silent and I once again needed to prompt him onward.

"You mentioned a baseball game"

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Tonight a Mr. Clay Buchholz will take the mound for the Boston Red Sox. Not the Clay Buchholz mind you, but a Clay Buchholz. The Clay Buchholz, the rising star of the Red Sox pitching staff who posted the highest ERA+ (187) in all of baseball in 2010 is sadly MIA. The man who takes the mound tonight is not the man whose devastating change up was named the best off-speed pitch in our Best Tools series this off-season. No, the Clay Buchholz who takes the mound tonight shares the same name, the same visage and so far as I know, the same fingerprints, but he is not the same pitcher. Sorry for any confusion this may cause.

Prior to landing on the DL with a stress fracture in his back, Clay Buchholz featured a powerful mix of ground ball stuff and the ability to miss bats. He got swinging strikes 9.3% of the time from 2009-2011, a rate comparable to Zack Greinke and Adam Wainwright. His best weapon was a killer change up that produced whiffs 22% of the time. His cutter and his fastball were also high effective at getting batter’s to miss; his cutter (sometimes classified as a slider) had a 10.2% whiff rate and his four seam fastball had a 4.6% whiff rate. Since returning, that Clay Buchholz has yet to make an appearance.

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The strange tale of Ryan O'Malley and his Spontanteous Temporal Displacement continues.

Ryan O’Malley was not the first person I ever met who claimed to have traveled through time. Living in New York City for the past several years, a fair number of people had made that claim while offering an unsolicited accounts of their lives. Typically these claims came on route to the person asking for change or attempting to convince me that their time travel experiences proved some debate notion like man and dinosaurs peacefully co-existing or that the pyramids were constructed by wookies. Sitting across from O’Malley as he calmly sipped his drink, I could see that he lacked the trademark wild, roaming eyes and reflexive twitching that usually characterized the average self-proclaimed time traveler. He was coherent and relaxed as he talked about spontaneously finding himself in a time long since past. No darting eyes, no conspiracy theories.

"I was in town visiting a friend of mine who was working as an adjunct at Northeastern," he began. "The 2011 baseball season had just started, but I can’t remember the date exactly, I never have been very good at keeping track of time," he said, cracking a smirk. "We had gone out to watch the Red Sox game at a bar near the campus and I got pretty drunk. I didn’t usually drink much back then," he explained before finishing his drink. "My professor friend had to get some work from office so we walked through the campus. I was feeling the effects of the alcohol and decided to wait outside while he retrieved his papers. Not long after he had entered the building, I become uncontrollably ill. I rushed over to the nearest bush and, well, purged myself, you understand."

"After that unpleasantness was over, I attempted to right myself with little success and collapsed, landing under a bronze figure of the great Cy Young. Beyond that, I have no further memory of that evening or of any event of the 2011 baseball season for that matter."

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This time of year can be frustrating. We have games being played and after the long winter and the meaningless exhibitions of Spring Training, everyone is thrilled to have real games to discuss. However, while we have meaningful baseball action happening, the truth is most of the statistics complied to this point are highly suspect. Basically every reference to statistics from the young season needs to carry the caveat of small sample size. These games matter, though, so when a player, especially a veteran player looks terrible, determining whether or not the rough start is the result of a decline in skill can’t wait for the 300-400 plate appearances. This is the case with Kevin Youkilis.

Thus far Youkilis is hitting just .184/.238/.289. While he showed some life last night, hitting his first home run of the year, he also just struck out in all four at bats against the Texas Rangers on Tuesday. He has looked just about as bad as any player in the game to this point. Bobby Valentine’s comments were moronic, but concerns about Youkilis’ struggles are well-founded. Injuries and Youk’s hard-nosed, high-emotion style of play have taken a toll. At 33, Youkilis is getting close to an age where significant decline is the norm for Major League players. Questioning his desire and commitment is foolish, but at this point it is probably just as foolish not question his ability to be a productive everyday player.

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First, let’s get one thing out of the way. The Red Sox cannot replace Jacoby Ellsbury. The Sox centerfielder was one of the game’s best players last season and even with regression, he is as irreplaceable as anyone in the game. It is not possible to find a four to five win player on short notice that can be acquired without selling the farm. Whatever arrangements the Red Sox make in Ellsbury’s absence, it will be a downgrade to some degree.

The issue here is minimizing damage. The Red Sox have lost an estimated six to eight weeks of an excellent player. They may get some help in replacing that lost production when Carl Crawford returns, but Crawford is hardly a lock to improve the situation. After all, he is returning from a wrist injury and coming off the worst season of his career. Even if Crawford returns strong and productive, the injury to Jacoby Ellsbury is a significant set back for a team that hopes to be in a very tight playoff race by year’s end.

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You want a prediction about the weather; you're asking the wrong Phil. I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life. – Bill Murray, Groundhog’s Day

I have been thinking about the movie Groundhog’s Day a lot lately. Red Sox fans are getting the Phil Conner’s treatment right now, being forced to re-live the same terrible experience over and over again. Last season, the team started 0-6. This season, they are 1-5. The numbers are slightly different, but the effect is the same. Or maybe, it’s worse. After all that the team put us through this fall, starting the season with a near perfect replication of the start of the 2011 just seems cruel.

Yet that is where we are. Last year, the team began the year scoring 16 runs in the first six games and allowing 38. This year the team has scored 22 runs and allowed, you guessed it, 38. In the sixth game last season, Jon Lester was excellent, pitching seven innings and striking out nine. However, the line up failed to show up and the bullpen, which was awful in the first six games, cost him the win. Back then, it was Daniel Bard not starting, he was in the bullpen, playing the part of 2012 Mark Melancon. Bard took the loss in game one, entering with the game tied at 5-5 in the seventh and promptly giving up four runs. He then took the loss in that the sixth game as well and at the end of that miserable stretch he had an ERA of 16.88. Last year, Terry Francona had secretary named Valentine and Bobby Valentine now has a secretary named Francona! Oh My GOD! Where does it end?

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I was taking a tour of Fenway Park, just before the Park’s centennial when I met the curious stranger who told me this impossible and incredible tale I now recount for you. I found myself chatting with him as we walked through the park, because we both tended to lag behind the main group. As we slipped back from the tour, this strange character occasionally narrated an entirely different and more fascinating history of the park. His tale may have been addressed to himself or to me or maybe to the empty park itself. I could not tell, at that time, if the events that he described actually happened or not, but now that I have come to know Ryan O’Malley and heard his strange story in full, I believe it all, every last word.

At that point, however, I stuck with O’Malley primarily because he was a complete curiosity. He had the outward appearance of a Brooklyn hipster: the ironic Mark Twain mustache and a grey fedora, but, being in his late thirties, he was a bit old for that meme and he did not carry himself in a way that made his old-timey look seem like cultural parody. He also spoke with a distinct rhythm of language that recalled some other time and place, when sportswriters puffed large black cigars and pounded out colorful game summaries on suitcase typewriters. His language made his non sequiturs all the more captivating. It was as if he was rattling off quotes from Hugh Fullerton or Ring Lardner, especially since nearly all of his anecdotes seemed to revolve around the Boston Red Sox championship season of 1912, Fenway’s inaugural year.

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Alfredo Aceves just missed out on the starting rotation coming out of Spring Training only to be named the Boston Red Sox new closer in the wake of the injury to Andrew Bailey. Whether he’s starting or closing games, Ace brings a strong arsenal of pitches and great intensity to the mound. He was a major part of our pitching staff last season and at this point, it seems he will have an even greater role this season.

After seeing Aceves in a large percentage of his 114 innings with the Red Sox, I feel like I know his work. Before writing my player profile of Ace, I had a pretty good idea about his stuff and what I could expect from him. That is until I noticed this-

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Since Bobby Valentine was named the new Boston Red Sox manager at the end of October, most of the conversation has revolved around who will be in his bullpen. Even before Valentine took over the Red Sox had lost their closer, Jonathan Papelbon, to the extreme generosity of the Phillies. The Red Sox added two major pieces to the puzzle by acquiring Mark Melancon and Andrew Bailey. The team also made the controversial decision to move the best remaining reliever, Daniel Bard into the starting rotation. The second best reliever remaining from the 2011 squad, Alfredo Aceves moved back and forth between the bullpen and spot starting duties last year and is also currently in the running for a starting role.

With all this focus on who will or will not be a part of the bullpen, we have not given much thought to how the new manager will use the players he has. Former manager Terry Francona was generally very predictable in this respect. 34 of the team’s 56 save opportunities went to closer Jonathan Papelbon last year. Daniel Bard recorded 34 of the team’s 75 holds, over three times more than runner-up Alfredo Aceves. He was unusually quick with the hook last year, in part because of the failing of the starting staff, leading the lead in the Bill James created Quick Hook stat, with 52. This was not typical for Francona, who lead the league in the opposite Slow Hook stat the previous year and generally was more inclined toward giving his starter a long leash.

Francona ran the bullpen in a very straight-forward way, he generally used one player for saves as often as possible, he gave to eighth inning to his second best reliever, possibly even bring them in an out or two early in close games. Outside the final two innings, he played both the platoon match ups and relied on players like Matt Albers and Alfredo Aceves to get the game to his top guys.

Until we have seen him in action, it is impossible to predict exactly how Bobby Valentine will handle his relievers, but looking at what he has done before might help to clue us in to some of the ideas he will bring to the table in managing the bullpen.

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Continuing with the theme of celebrating the 100 year anniversary of Fenway Park, I read Glenn Stout’s incredible account of the construction of the Red Sox home and the subsequent first season, Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year. The casual fan of baseball history might have some awareness of this incredible year in the game’s earlier and more offensively challenged era. The Red Sox World Series victory over the New York Giants is often most closely tied with name Snodgrass, in same way that the 1986 Series is tied to the name Buckner. Fred Snodgrass’s error on a routine fly ball might be the most recounted event of that season, but it hardly the year’s only memorable moment. Some incredible baseball moments from that inaugural year, both for the Boston Red Sox and for Fenway Park have passed from memory and been lost to the passage of time. Glen Stout brings those moments to life with stunning detail and a vibrant sense of the moment.

Stout does not begin with Charles or John I. Taylor, the Red Sox owners, or with architect James McLuaghlin, who designed the timeless baseball venue, but with Jerome Kelley, a Irish immigrant labor, who served as the groundskeeper for the Red Sox, first at the Huntington Ave Grounds and then at the newly built Fenway Park. This choice, along with Stout’s dedications ("to the fans in the stands- particularly the bleachers…") clues you in to the author’s allegiances. While this story is largely about the deeds of wealth and powerful men who created a park to fatten their pockets, and it is perhaps primarily the story of great athletes who made their living on at that Park, it is the inclusion of people like Jerome Kelley that elevates this book into the upper realms of baseball and history writing. It is not just the actions of the players on the field that Stout brings to life, but the cheers and groans of the fans as they can to embrace this team and this ballpark for the first time.

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If you have attempted the Herculean task of projecting players yourself, whether here at the site, or in your own massive excel-based laboratory, you have no doubt run into the brick wall that is playing time. Most of the gurus of baseball projections will happily tell you that projecting playing time is the biggest challenge in the whole process. The rest will tell you the same thing; they just won’t do it happily. Between injuries, competition for jobs, managerial preferences, and poor performances, it is extremely difficult to estimate how much a player will actually play. That tends to make projecting everything else a little more difficult too.

Pitchers are naturally the most complicated players to project playing time for. There are a number of different roles that pitchers can be placed in and that greatly shape their innings totals. The difference between a middle reliever and a fifth starter is likely to be over one hundred innings, but in many cases the same player could end up in either role. This issue is extremely relevant for the 2012 Boston Red Sox, as their likely fourth starter, Daniel Bard, is making the transition from setup man to starter and at least one candidate for the rotation, Felix Doubront, who is just 24, has yet to total 150 innings in a season at any level. For this reason, the competition for the final starting spot is more practically a competition for the fifth and sixth starters’ roles and even beyond.

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With the 100^th Anniversary season of Fenway Park upon us, there is no shortage of tributes to the "Most Beloved Ballpark in America" coming our way. Among them, in elegant coffee table book form, is Fenway Park: A Salute to the Coolest, Cruelest, Longest-Running Major League Baseball Stadium in America by Jon Powers and Ron Driscoll. Powers and Driscoll both write for the Boston Globe and the book is a collection of photos and some past work from the Globe woven together with a decade by decade history of the park and its primary tenant, The Boston Red Sox.

It is fitting that such an excellent tribute to the 100 year old park should come from the Globe; the paper and the team are inseparably linked. In 1912, it was Boston Globe publisher Charles Taylor bought the team in 1904 and bequeathed it to his son, John I. Taylor, who became the team’s owner and president. In 1911, Taylor sold half of his stake in the club to finance the construction of Fenway Park, which he would own in full until 1914. His son Benjamin Taylor, also a publisher of the Globe for a time, contributes a special introduction for the book, touching on his own personal relationship with the club.

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This off-season, the Boston Red Sox acquired two players with long tracks records of weak power at the plate. Utility infielder Nick Punto and right fielder Ryan Sweeney both have career ISO’s under .100 and neither has ever hit more than 6 home runs in a season (Sweeney’s high water mark). While it is certainly not unusual for a utility infielder or a fourth outfielder to lack pop, both Punto and Sweeney are expected to see far more playing time than standard back ups. In fact, Sweeney, being the left-handed half of a right-field platoon plan, may be close to being an everyday player. Punto will see time at shortstop and help to spell Kevin Youkilis at third base, making him far more than an emergency option.

One major reason the Red Sox are willing to play both these players on a regular basis is fairly obvious. Both Sweeney and Punto are excellent defensive players. Sweeney has the speed and instincts to play center and, in right, his center fielder’s glove is a great advantage for a team that plays in Fenway Park, with its deep and wide right field. Punto is as good as it gets at third base and above average at short and second as well, making him a prefect fit for the Red Sox infield needs. Adding their gloves will help the pitching staff succeed even when the strikeouts are not there.

What interests me about both of these players, and the Red Sox decision to bring them in this season, is not their plus glove work, but rather something that they both have in common when they step to the plate. Both players get on base quite well in spite of being among the least dangerous hitters in the game when it comes to power.

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Well, we have reached the end of our Best Tools series. We have laughed, we have cried, we got to watch that GIF of Daniel Bard bending the laws of physics. Most importantly, in this election year, everyone got to exercise their right to vote. Here are the results for the entire series, just think of it as an Over the Monster clip show-

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With Clay Buchholz healthy, the Boston Red Sox have three pitchers at the top of their rotation who can absolutely dominate a game. Last season, Josh Beckett was the team’s best pitcher worth 4.3 win above replacement by Fangraph’s system. In 2010, it was Jon Lester leading the way, with 5.7 fWAR. Buchholz was very good in 2010 as well, with 3.7 fWAR and the best ERA+ in the American League. In 2012, the rotation may get an additional boost from setup man Daniel Bard who is transitioning into a starter’s role this spring. If this quartet can remain healthy, the Red Sox are going to be tough to beat in a four game series.

Joining these four pitchers is new closer Andrew Bailey who takes the place of Jonathan Papelbon in the Red Sox bullpen and Mark Melancon, who will jump into Bard’s setup role. As we have seen in this series, all of these pitchers have excellent fastballs and at least one off-speed pitch that can baffle opposing hitters. Pitching is about more just one or two pitches, however. A pitcher needs to have a strong repertoire, good control of those pitches and the ability to effective sequence his pitches to maximize their effectiveness. Putting all of this together separates the top line starters and closers from the back end guys and middle relievers. So which Red Sox pitcher has the best stuff?

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The Boston Red Sox have made tremendous progress in improving their team defense. Long gone are the days of lead footed sluggers roaming Fenway Park. Boston finished 4^th in the American League in defensive efficiency last season, turning 70.1% of balls in play into outs. Utlimate Zone Rating, the often controversial system of defensive evaluation used at Fangraphs loved the defensive contributions of Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury, who ranked 2^nd and 3^rd in runs saved by that system last season. Pedroia also won the Fielding Bible Award for best second basemen last season.

Ben Cherington and his team did not sit on their defensive laurels, however. They added a slick fielding outfield capable of playing all three outfield positions in Ryan Sweeney and brought in Nick Punto to back up Youkilis, Pedroia and Aviles in the infield. With the team becoming more ground ball centric this season and taking a chance on some low strike out pitchers for the back end of the rotation, the 2012 team will emphasis defense as much as any Red Sox team in recent memory.

So who is the team’s Best Defender?

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The 2011 World Series featured two of the top catchers in baseball going against each other. On one side, there was Yadier Molina, the best defensive catcher the game has see since Ivan Rodriquez’s prime and on the other there was Mike Napoli, a guy with enough pop in his bat to play at first, but enough catching ability to hold his own behind the plate (as long as Mike Scoscia is not watching). It is hardly coincident that the two teams battling for the title had premiere catchers; finding elite production at baseball’s most physically and mentally demanding position is never easy, but for the few teams that manage to do it, it can be the force that elevates them beyond the rest of the league.

During his incredible peak from 2003 to 2007, Jason Varitek was that force for the Boston Red Sox, leading them to two World Series Championship. While Varitek was never the best player on those teams, he was an essential role player. However, he may have been the most difficult Red Sox player to replace during those peak years.

During that span he averaged a 112 wRC+, the third best mark for a catcher with over 2000 plate appearances during that five year span, trailing only Jorge Posada and Victor Martinez. During that span, just 39 catchers amassed even 1000 plate appearance. The average wRC+ for those 39 catchers is just 91, making Varitek 21% better than the average catcher offensively Varitek. However, made 2530 trips to the plate in that period, the seventh highest total in the game. Only five catchers made more than 2000 plate appearances and still hit above average by wRC+. For those five years, Jason Varitek was one of a handful of catchers in the game to play with such skill and such consistency. Add in his incredible ability to handle the pitching staff and you have a player that is almost impossible to replace.

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In general, a pitcher makes his living with his fastball. Without a Major League fastball, a pitcher needs to either a) throw a knuckle ball or b) find another line of work. However, no pitcher can survive throwing nothing but fastballs. Even Daniel Bard, who throws somewhere in the range of a million light years per second, needs a secondary pitch. Pitchers need to disrupt the hitter’s timing and keep him from sitting on that blazing fastball.

To do this, pitchers have created a plethora of strange and wonderful offerings- the curveball, the slider, the change up, the knuckle curve, the circle change, the slurve, the screwball, the eephus, the gyro-ball, the split finger, and should all else fail, the spit ball. All of these pitches are as unique as snowflakes, but they have one thing in common. These pitches all exist to make hitter’s swing wildly as the ball dips, dives, or hangs just out of reach.

Boston pitchers have a pretty wide range of secondary pitches and there are no shortages of good candidates for the best off-speed pitch award. As per usual, you will find an eye popping array of data after the leap, all aimed at helping you pick the best off-speed pitch. This time, however, that data is extremely open to interpretation. You can consider things like pitch value (by linear weights), or whiff rate or even the differential between the average pitch in each category and a particular offering, but in the end, this one is truly a matter of taste. Fortunately, your 2012 Boston Red Sox have something for everyone.

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The 2012 Boston Red Sox will feature three of the top five hitters in the American League last season by wRC+. They have two more hitters in the top 20. As Marc has pointed out on more than one occasion, the 2011 team raked at nearly historic levels. The player who ranks as Boston’s best overall hitter has a good case for best hitter in all of baseball.

Thanks to the advancements begun by Bill James and Pete Palmer and carried on by the fine people at Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus and The Book Blog, we are better at measuring offensive ability now than ever before. Metrics like wRC+, wOBA and True Average have joined the more traditional numbers like batting average, OBP and Slugging and in many respects they have replaced them. Even with these statistics, which weigh the value of each batting event with great accuracy, one number doesn’t tell us everything we need to know. There is still a mix of luck and skill at play. The results need to be weighted equally with the process to determine the best hitter.

Lucky for us, we can take a good look at both results and processes-

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The Boston Red Sox favor a certain type of pitcher. Whether they are drafting, signing free agents or exploring the trade market, they consistently hone in on power pitchers. The team has one of the hardest throwers in the game in Daniel Bard, one of the hardest throwing starters in Josh Beckett and one of the hardest throwing lefties in Jon Lester. These guys throw hard and rack up the strikeouts, but they are not among the great control pitchers in the game. Only one Red Sox pitcher was among the top 10 in BB% last season and sadly, Jonathan Papelbon will not be back in 2012.

Looking at the 2011 team by the ratio of strikes to balls, it is not surprising that Papelbon holds a commanding lead over all other Sox pitchers. In fact, only Papelbon and Dan Wheeler had a ratio of strikes to balls over two (though ironically, Tim Wakefield came very close).

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The Red Sox have two players almost certainly starting at the AAA level who have excited scouts and prospect writers and who may impact the 2012 season. The system’s top prospect in John Mayo’s MLB top 100, Will Middlebrooks is a third basemen who raked through two minor league levels last season while playing good defense at third base. Shortstop prospect Jose Iglesias didn’t rake by any conventional interpretation of that term, but his glove alone has kept him in the top 10 of Red Sox prospects. At just 21 years old, he could be a long term answer at shortstop and put an end to the revolving door at that position.

As soon as 2013, the left side of the Boston infield could be an impactful and home grown duo. Much of the high expectations for these players is coming from their potential impact in the field. If the experts are right, an infield of Middlebrooks, Iglesias, Pedroia and Gonzalez could be the best in the game. That is certainly an exciting prospect for a team that with significant concerns about the back-end of its rotation.

So, what impact can we expect from a plus fielding third baseman like Middlebrooks or an elite fielding shortstop like Iglesias?

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The Red Sox make pitchers work. Going through a line up that starts with Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia and centers on some combination of Adrian Gonzalez, Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz is no pitcher’s idea of a good time. All of these hitters are stacked at the top of the order because they see pitches well, laying off the bad ones and putting a hurt on the good ones. So, who has the best batting eye on the team?

There are a number of ways we can try to answer this question. The obvious starting point is on-base percentage; the end result of a patient plate approach should be getting on base. OBP is more than just batting eye however, it is heavily connected to contact and also power. The team leader last year was Adrian Gonzalez. While A-Gon has a great eye at the plate, he also makes a lot of contact and has intimidating power. He is good candidate for best batting eye, but several other players at the top of the order have persuasive arguments as well.

Dustin Pedroia saw more pitches per plate appearance than any other Red Sox player. In fact, he saw more pitches than all but five other players in the game. Kevin Youkilis swung at fewer pitches out of the zone than any other player on the team (and fewer pitches overall as well). Youk also led the team in BB%, just ahead of David Ortiz, who struck out a full 5.5% less than Youk.

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