We all know that Moreland has been playing well and the desire to get him more playing time certainly factored into the decision to designate Hanley Ramirez for assignment on May 25th. What is shocking is just how good Moreland has been when you look at his numbers. Moreland is leading all American League first basemen with a .313 True Average while slashing .292/.355/.606. If you’re curious, that .606 slugging percentage is the best in the entire league among first basemen. Moreland has done this while being an above average defender at the position, placing him second in the AL in WARP at 0.83.

The only player ahead of Moreland in WARP is Jose Abreu, who is in the midst of another typical Abreu-like season with a WARP of 0.86. Since Ramirez was just recently designated for assignment, and received ample playing time before said transaction, Moreland had only appeared in 43 games this year, while Abreu has played in 54. Despite playing fewer games, they both have nine home runs on the season, and Abreu has just three more RBI, with 31. Moreland has been more effective on a game-by-game basis, has played better defense, and his .403 wOBA is clearly ahead of Abreu’s mark of .373. With Miguel Cabrera and Justin Smoak having down years, and Edwin Encarnacion only playing seven games at first base, the vote will surely come down to these two.

Like it or not, the fans have the vote in the All-Star game, and the Red Sox, by holding the best record in baseball, have drawn far more attention than the second-to-worst record amassed by the White Sox. It’s a little harsh to say, but few fans care about the White Sox right now. Abreu is wasted on that team, and likely won’t get the support he deserves when it comes to the voting. Should Abreu be traded to a contending team before the All-Star break, this could change, however, as popularity and success matter.

If Moreland does make the team it will be deserved, but it doesn’t mean he is anything close to the best first baseman in baseball. The National League side features Freedie Freeman, Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, Brandon Belt, Eric Hosmer, and Cody Bellinger, just to name a few. There are going to be some very deserving first basemen that don’t even make that roster as a reserve. By TAv, Moreland is behind Belt, Freeman, and Jesus Aguilar, and ahead of Goldy, Rizzo, Votto, and the rest. If he makes the team as a starter, this will not be a Brock Holt: 2015 All-Star situation.

The Statcast numbers back up what Moreland has been achieving this year, and show some real meaningful change. His average exit velocity is 93.6 mph, which is far and away better than his previous best of 91.4 mph in 2015, and up significantly from 89.1 mph last year. Moreland is making harder contact more frequently than ever before, posting a 53.3 percent hard-hit rate and a career-best barrels percentage at 13.3. Much of this has come from Moreland pulling the ball more than ever, at 49.5 percent of the time — up from 37.2 percent last season. Can he keep this up? Who knows? What we do know is that Moreland is swinging at more pitches in the zone than ever before at 72.5 percent, and is doing damage on those pitches.

His two-year, 13-million-dollar deal is looking more and more like a bargain, and an excellent investment on the part of Dave Dombrowski. This contract is a welcome departure from Pablo Sandoval, Ramirez, and Rusney Castillo, and for a deal that was largely panned coming into the season, Mitch Moreland has gone so far beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

Header photo by Brian Fluharty — USA TODAY Sports

It’ll never be time for “on pace for” jokes, but if the Red Sox do indeed hit 36 grand slams this year, that’ll be incredible at the very least. So let’s look at the sextet of slams this team has hit, and enjoy each and every one of them, because after last year, I don’t think we’ll ever fully appreciate the of majesty of a four-RBI knock. Soak it all in while you can.

Grand Slam #1 — April 7th

It says a lot about how hard that ball was hit when all the left fielder does is turn to watch it.

Xander Bogaerts had already lashed a two-run double in the first inning by this point, and I guess he felt the need to pour it on. Jacob Faria’s 3-2 pitch was a flat fastball right down the middle, and Bogaerts got all of it and sent it into orbit. It goes without saying, but Bogaerts with two healthy wrists is a monster.

This was sort of a cathartic moment for the Red Sox, as they hit their first grand slam since 2016, and the offense finally broke out in a big way against a team that had held them to 11 runs in four games the week before. The cure to those offensive woes? Score eight runs in the first two innings against said opponent. Four out of every five managers would agree.

Grant Slam #2 — April 10th

Splitters aren’t supposed to be left in the top of the zone. That grand slam is a pretty good example why.

With the game getting wildly out of hand for the New York Yankees, Aaron Boone left Chasen Shreve in the game to face a gauntlet of Red Sox hitters, who had already chased Luis Severino from the game after five innings of five-run ball. It already wasn’t going well, with the Sox scoring five times in the frame already, then Shreve left a splitter up in the zone that Betts turned into a souvenir.

If you’re going to miss with a splitter, miss down, since it’s a lot harder to hit a ball 400 feet if it’s in the dirt. That’s not going to do a lot of good for Shreve now, obviously, but it’s nice to know.

Grand Slam #3 — April 11th

The very next day? You betcha.

J.D. Martinez wasted zero time in clobbering a first-pitch splitter that hung over the center of the plate. Masahiro Tanaka’s splitter was certainly lower than Shreve’s, but still not low enough. This game had already been marred by David Price losing feeling in his hand and Gary Sanchez blasting two dingers, so seeing Martinez bring the Red Sox back into the game just like that was very exciting.

Of course, this was also the Joe Kelly Fight Club game, so the Red Sox would go on to lose, albeit in a combative way. But at least it was fun, as fun as a loss can be.

Grand Slam #4 — April 18th

This is probably the first pitch that wasn’t outright terrible. Tyler Skaggs kind of hangs a curveball that, to his credit, does end up at the bottom of the zone, but it also hovered over the heart of the plate. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t already thrown two curveballs in the plate appearance, giving Rafael Devers an idea of what to look for. He was all over it, and knocked it over the new right field fence in Anaheim for his first career grand slam.

As with the other games in Anaheim, this one was a blowout. The Red Sox hit three homers and the pitching staff combined to only allow eight baserunners all game. At that point, a grand slam feels a little like showboating, but hey, I’m not an officer of the fun police.

Grand Slam #5 — April 20th

Three straight singles to left field to lead off the inning, and Kendall Graveman’s day was done. The Oakland Athletics elect to bring in Emilio Pagan, and before NESN goes to a commercial break, you see that shot of Mitch Moreland and the Red Sox coaches looking at some advance scouting reports. Once they come back to the game, Dave O’Brien hypes up Moreland a little bit, and then Moreland obliterates the first pitch he sees from Pagan.

That almost seems too good to be true, but seriously, that actually happened. The timing and camera shots could not have been better. Pagan hung a slider that caught the center of the plate — where have we seen that before, I wonder? — and Moreland was not about to let a mistake go unpunished. Or at least MLB’s website calls it a slider. I don’t know. It was a garbage pitch regardless. Do better, Emilio.

Grand Slam #6 — April 30th

Bogaerts’ grand slams always seem to have a certain majesty to them, don’t they?

Jason Hammel seemingly tries to jam Bogaerts with a high inside fastball, but Bogaerts, as O’Brien said, jumped all over it. On a 3-2 count yet again, Bogaerts gets a fastball to clobber, and clobber it he did. The Red Sox were sputtering here, as Eduardo Rodriguez was 1. not sharp and 2. getting squeezed by the C.B. Bucknor Strike Zone™, so they really needed the offense to come alive, and so it did, thanks to Bogaerts. Bonus points are awarded to Christian Vazquez for his dance in the dugout.

When a team ties a record for grand slams a year after hitting none of them, there’s no way you don’t try and appreciate what they’ve done. This team is good! Maybe not .750-win-percentage good, but they’re really, really good. The power’s back on, and the Red Sox are lighting it up. Here’s to more grand slams and great moments over the next five months. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.

Header photo by Bob DeChiara — USA TODAY Sports

The 2018 Red Sox have already had their fair share. I tried to do my best to nail down the ones that have been the most vital to their hot start, and the most surprising.

Rick Porcello keeping the ball in the yard

Porcello gave up a league-high 38 home runs in 2017, resulting in a ghastly 1.7 dingers per nine innings. It was a career high, and one of the driving factors behind his 4.65 ERA.

This season has been the opposite. No, like the total opposite. He hasn’t even given up a single home run yet in 25.2 innings pitched.

And he’s had plenty of chances. He’s faced the New York Yankees, a squad which boasts the vaunted Giancarlo Stanton-Aaron Judge-Gary Sanchez power trio. He held them to a pair of hits over seven scoreless innings. Then came the Angels, who lead the American League with 26 dingers.

He and Chris Sale have combined to create the league’s most dominant one-two punch thus far. As I wrote last week, Porcello’s success is the team’s X-factor. Him laying off the home run balls and piling on the strikeouts certainly helps.

Mitch Moreland thriving in limbo

When the Red Sox added J.D. Martinez, everything improved… aside from Mitch Moreland’s clarity towards his role for 2018 and beyond.

Mitch Moreland was more than serviceable as the team’s starting first baseman last season. With Martinez in the fold, a bit of a logjam has been created at the position. Martinez moved Hanley Ramirez mostly back to first, as he has rotated between designated hitter and outfield.

That leaves Moreland, who’s been in proverbial limbo, bouncing from the bench to the starting nine, and from first base to designated hitter.

If you want to put it into basketball terms, he’s the sixth-man. A late game defensive substitution at first. A starter when Martinez is in the outfield and Ramirez is DH’ing. He’s all over the place, and he’s been killing it.

He’s hitting .343 in his new role, with an OPS of 0.986. Against the Angels on Wednesday, he went 3-for-4 with a home run, a walk and three RBI.

If this Boston team has real World Series aspirations, depth will be key. If Mitch Moreland can keep contributing like he has (although hitting .355 for the rest of the season might be a tad lofty) the depth will be alright.

The team’s 5-1 record against New York and Los Angeles

Was anyone exactly surprised when the Red Sox opened the season 8-1 against the rebuilding Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins? Not exactly. Anything less might have been a disappointment.

But to follow that up with a 5-1 record against one team expected to win its division by many pundits (New York) and another team leading the AL West (Los Angeles) all while mixing in a sweep of the Orioles? That’s a real resume booster.

The Sox have done it in a number of ways. With pitching, with hitting. In blowouts and it close wins. This, more than anything, is optimistic to see as we begin to reach the point of the season where its decided whether teams are “for real” or not.

Header photo by Richard Mackson — USA TODAY Sports

The performance of the pitching depth has been the most surprising, as Johnson and Hector Velazquez have combined to allow just two runs in 11.2 innings pitched. They’ve taken care of business where business needed to happen: in Florida, against both the Rays and the Marlins. Granted, we’re not talking turn-of-the-decade-Yankees juggernauts here, but outings like that are always very positive, especially in an environment where baseballs are being launched into the stands more than ever. Eduardo Rodriguez came back a little earlier than expected and had middling results for the first game, and with Drew Pomeranz still about a week away from returning, we’ll be seeing a little more of Johnson, with Velazquez in the bullpen for now.

On the position player side, that depth is about to get tested. Eduardo Nunez is a bench guy already playing due to Dustin Pedroia recovering from knee surgery, but as far as bench players getting a lot of playing time, he’s really the only one. That’s about to change, thanks to the weird, freak injury Xander Bogaerts suffered on Sunday. At first glance, it seemed like a rolled ankle or something just as innocuous, but it was a fair bit worse than that:

Red Sox announce Xander Bogaerts to DL with “small crack” in talus bone

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) April 9, 2018

Well, that’s a bummer. Thankfully, it’s looking like two weeks until Bogaerts returns. I really feel like crediting the Red Sox for actually letting Bogaerts heal up this time, but that seems like the sort of thing they should do in the first place, not let them play for three months with a bad wrist.

And so the Sox look for a stand-in. Deven Marrero is long gone, as he was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks towards the end of Spring Training. Tzu-Wei Lin was called up to take Bogaerts’ roster spot, and he can play both middle infield positions, but he’ll probably take a backseat at shortstop to Eduardo Nunez, while he and Brock Holt trade off at second base. No one else can readily play shortstop for the Red Sox at the moment, and you can’t really count on Marco Hernandez showing up anytime soon, as he’s on the 60-day disabled list, and won’t appear in game action until the end of May. Mitch Moreland is strictly a first baseman, and Blake Swihart is a catcher with corner infield experience in a pinch. There’s not much past Nunez, Lin, and Holt for middle infielders, unless you want to go deep into the minors.

The quality of the middle infielders is just alright. I’d like to be higher on these guys, but we’ve seen their shortcomings. Nunez is fine, Holt is an uninspiring player nowadays, and there’s a pretty wide range of outcomes for Lin should he play a lot over the next couple weeks. I’d honestly like to see more Lin and less Holt, but I’ve been very down on Holt for a long while — with good reason! — so I feel that’s more of a personal preference. Either way, there’s going to be a lot of shuffling around second base.

The Bogaerts injury really forces them to dig deep for infielders, and it’s not like this is a common occurrence.

Injuries like this are really testing the Red Sox early on. It’s not a test to see if they can keep up their winning ways or production — they have above-average regulars at nearly every position. The Bogaerts injury really forces them to dig deep for infielders, and it’s not like this is a common occurrence. Bogaerts is a pretty healthy player, as he’s played 144 games or more in every season since he took hold of a starting job in 2014, so it’s not as if the Sox were lax in looking for a backup here. Bogaerts doesn’t often go down like this, and if it wasn’t already obvious, the “Bogaerts is soft!” complaint doesn’t really hold up.

The Red Sox were more prepared to cover for Pedroia’s absence instead, but with Bogaerts’ injury, it forces them to spread that depth thin across two positions, and potentially field someone like Holt for a not-inconsequential amount of time. That’s a sub-par outcome, for reasons including his poor production in the last two years. But this is what happens when depth is needed, especially for someone that really never needs a break — you’re forced to use guys who aren’t always cut out to be starters at certain positions. It’s times like this when you miss Marrero’s defense, even if that meant biting the bullet when it came to his offense.

This could all just be handwringing. It’s only two weeks or so! The Nunez-Holt-Lin hydra could perform spectacularly and emulate Johnson’s and Velazquez’s starts to the season. That is also possible! All of these players have had very notable runs of success before, for example: Brock Holt, 2015 American League All-Star. Personally, I’d fall on the pessimist side of things here, if only because I keep low expectations in general.

But this is why depth exists. None of them are supposed to be as good as the starter, or else they’d be, y’know, starting. The Red Sox are a stacked team with a lot of good players, and having one of the starting nine be “just alright” won’t trip them up, but it’s probably going to be a bit bland without Bogaerts out there. At least he’ll be back soon, and we can worry no more.

Photo by Greg M. Cooper — USA TODAY Sports

Regardless of his escapades on the field, Ramirez has been incredibly endearing as a player. From his infectious attitude to his trademark swagger, there’s something to like with him, no matter who you are. From shadowboxing during a live interview to staring down the camera, Ramirez is a guy you really want to root for, because when he’s good, everything is great, and someone being as contagiously fun as him is something you don’t see all that often.

The problem is those aforementioned escapades. We look back on his 2016 season fondly because of two major aspects: he was healthy and he was productive. The former is a requirement for the latter, yes, but that’s the same with every player. The problem is that the Red Sox would have him play despite nagging injuries. You probably remember him crumpling his shoulder during his disastrous outfield experiment in early May 2015, and while his first half that season was solid, with a .223 ISO and a .816 OPS, he cratered in the second half, crashing all the way down to a .449 OPS before being benched for the youngsters later on. 2017 was more of the same, although to a lesser extent. Ramirez started this season on a strict diet of starts as the designated hitter, and seldom saw the field due to a shoulder injury that limited him to 17 starts at first. While his first half in 2017 came with a solid .794 OPS, he once again faded in the second half, with his OPS dropping 100 points, his plate discipline eroding, and his batted-ball profile heading south.

It’s hard to dismiss what Ramirez has done so far, which admittedly is a very small sample, but it’s encouraging for the oldest player on the 25-man roster.

Is it fair to place the blame for playing poorly through injury squarely on Ramirez’s shoulders? Probably not, no, because 1) his desire to play wasn’t put in check by a Red Sox team that hasn’t had a good grasp on injury management for years, 2) injuries like 2015’s can be unexpected and freakish, and 3) quite frankly, I’m scared that putting that much weight on those shoulders could injure them again. Nevertheless, it became really easy to write him off coming into 2018, with the signings of Mitch Moreland and J.D. Martinez both poised to take plate appearances from the aging infielder. Ramirez said he was healthy, and had a healthy Spring Training, so maybe we were just underrating him, because he’s had one hell of a start to the season so far.

Maybe he just likes playing in Florida. I don’t know. Either way, it’s hard to dismiss what Ramirez has done so far, which admittedly is a very small sample, but it’s encouraging for the oldest player on the 25-man roster (until Dustin Pedroia comes back). Of all the optimistic stuff we’ve seen, the most intriguing has been his batted-ball profile. Yesterday, Cam Ellis wrote about the Red Sox being more aggressive on pitches in the zone, and Ramirez has certainly picked up on that. His swing percentage on pitches in the zone jumped over 10 percentage points from 2017 to a hearty 80.6 percent, and with that came a nice spike in contact rate in the zone too, jumping up to 93 percent from 86 percent in 2017. He’s swinging more, and making more contact. That’s pretty good, as long as the quality of said contact is improved, and to some extent, it has. Line drives and fly balls are slightly higher than his 2017 marks, and the grounders are disappearing. There’s a lot of pop-ups mixed in those fly balls as well, but with the six-game sample size we’re using, that’s to be expected.

But in the end, we’re still talking about that relatively tiny six-game stretch. There’s got to be something else other than hoping those numbers can play out over the next 156 games, right? Sure is! Let’s take a look at Hanley’s home run from Monday.

That’s not exactly a towering blast, but there’s a lot of strength involved. Trevor Richards hangs a slider that doesn’t catch a ton of the plate, but hovers over the outside corner. Ramirez whips it all the way around to left field for a home run. I understand Richards isn’t a mystifying pitcher, but that’s some subtly impressive power, and he doesn’t (or can’t) do that with a hurt shoulder. Those cranky joints of his are going to be the most important things when gauging how well he can do. Hanley with two healthy shoulders can hit those hanging sliders. Hanley with less than that gets eaten up by them. Imagine what he could do with a third shoulder!

It was difficult to watch that game on Monday and not think Ramirez was going to go on a tear. He hit that homer, had a single to go along with it, and was diving for baseballs on the infield dirt like he was ten years younger — which they don’t have highlight videos of, sadly, because when Hanley’s feeling good, you can tell. He emphatically fist pumps when the Red Sox turn a clutch double play. He goes all-out for hard-hit grounders and plays some empirically good defense. He shows why his goal of a 30/30 season isn’t just a pipe dream, even though everything from age to potential playing time is against him.

This is fun. This is exciting. This is what a healthy Hanley Ramirez is, and I hope he sticks around, because he makes the Red Sox so much better.

Photo by Steve Mitchell — USA TODAY Sports

Interesting spring for Devers
42 PA, 3 HR, 3 2B, 3B, 0 BB, 4 K, 1.000 OPS

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) March 20, 2018

I get that the account is referencing the fact that over 42 spring training at-bats, Devers had yet to walk, and even if that’s not actually that interesting, it got me thinking about what a good 2018 from Rafael Devers looks like.

As a quick refresher: Devers hit .284/.338/.482 in 240 plate appearances over 52 games. He crushed that shot off Chapman at Yankee Stadium in the top of the 9th inning to go along with the other nine less memorable homers. He posted a 111 wRC+, .344 wOBA, and looked surprisingly ready for major-league pitching for a 12-year-old. With that said, it wasn’t perfect. He swung at a lot of pitches, many of which were not strikes. He posted a swing percentage four percentage points higher than league average, yet only swung at strikes at a league-average clip.

It’s tempting to look at Devers’ numbers and think about what he could do with 150-ish healthy games under his belt. His offensive potential seems to a central focus this spring, and rightfully so. I think there’s a case to be made, however, that improving his defense is what’s most important towards maximizing his value to this year’s team.

By my count, Devers is the Red Sox’s fifth-most important hitter as it stands currently. The top tier belongs to Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez, followed by Xander Bogaerts and Andrew Benintendi in no specific order. Mitch Moreland and Hanley Ramirez cancel each other out, while Jackie Bradley Jr. and Christian Vasquez provide more value on the defensive end, with the occasional hot streak sprinkled in every few weeks. Devers matching last year’s offensive production out of the middle/bottom of the order, as a 21-year-old, would be a dream come true.

Strengthening the left side of the Red Sox’ defense, however, would be more important to this team this year. Xander Bogaerts has a good glove by some metrics and a bad one by others, which is tremendously unhelpful. Bogaerts is undoubtedly a major-league shortstop, but it’s just a matter of how good of one. Andrew Benintendi has some work to do in left field, too. Neither are horrendous at their positions, but I’d be a lot more comfortable if the entire left side of the Red Sox defense wasn’t shaky at best.

Even if Devers spends long stretches of this year in a slump, the Red Sox offense should be able to carry the team into the postseason. If Devers continues playing the type of defense that gets him demoted for Deven Marrero during the playoffs, the team’s going to suffer. I love Brock Holt as much as the next guy, but depending on Holt to hold down a position for large chunks of the season just isn’t realistic anymore. Eduardo Nunez and his bad knees need to be ready to replace Dustin Pedroia and his bad knees. I’ll believe the Blake Swihart experiment when I see it outside of Florida backfields. Third base is firmly Devers’ this year, and his progression on defense is what the Red Sox need the most from him this season.

But if he wants to hit more homers off Chapman, that’s fine too.

Photo by Kim Klement — USA TODAY Sports

Presenting the full list 2017 Roster Recaps, listed with the authors that wrote them. An asterisk denotes a player who has, as of March 13th, dearly departed the Red Sox. We’ll miss them all terribly.

Catchers

• Sandy Leon (Cam Ellis)
• Blake Swihart (Jake Devereaux)
• Christian Vazquez (Brett Cowett)

Infielders

• Xander Bogaerts (Chris Teeter)
• Chase d’Arnaud* (Matt Kory)
• Rafael Devers (Kory)
• Marco Hernandez (Cowett)
• Brock Holt (Devereaux)
• Tzu-Wei Lin (Cowett)
• Deven Marrero (Cowett)
• Mitch Moreland (Cowett)
• Eduardo Nunez (Teeter)
• Dustin Pedroia (Kory)
• Hanley Ramirez (Devereaux)
• Josh Rutledge* (Cowett)
• Pablo Sandoval* (Cowett)
• Sam Travis (Teeter)

Outfielders

• Andrew Benintendi (Ellis)
• Mookie Betts (Kory)
• Jackie Bradley Jr. (Cowett)
• Rajai Davis* (Daniel Poarch)
• Steve Selsky (Ellis)
• Chris Young* (Cowett)

Pitchers

• Fernando Abad* (Ellis)
• Matt Barnes (Cowett)
• Blaine Boyer* (Cowett)
• Roenis Elias (Poarch)
• Doug Fister* (Kory)
• Heath Hembree (Kory)
• Brian Johnson (Teeter)
• Joe Kelly (Ellis)
• Kyle Kendrick* (Poarch)
• Craig Kimbrel (Cowett)
• Austin Maddox (Ellis)
• Kyle Martin (Poarch)
• Drew Pomeranz (Ellis)
• Rick Porcello (Teeter)
• David Price (Ellis)
• Noe Ramirez* (Poarch)
• Addison Reed* (Ellis)
• Eduardo Rodriguez (Cowett)
• Robbie Ross* (Cowett)
• Chris Sale (Cowett)
• Robby Scott (Cowett)
• Carson Smith (Teeter)
• Ben Taylor (Cowett)
• Hector Velazquez (Devereaux)
• Brandon Workman (Ellis)
• Steven Wright (Kory)

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports

That offseason, the Red Sox famously brought in future Hall of Fame pitcher and future Hall of Fame-level asshole Curt Schilling to, as it turned out, co-front the rotation. They also brought in Mark Bellhorn, Terry Francona, and maybe even more importantly, Keith Foulke. It was a murderer’s row of talent, from the front office on down. As it turned out, it was just barely enough to get past the Yankees in a second consecutive ALCS Game Seven. That was elation so high it lifted my ankles off the floor.

That two-year period where the Red Sox went from so close to winning to losing to so close to losing to winning represents certainly the most intense rivalry between two teams I’ve ever experienced or endured in my lifetime. And now, dear reader, 200 words into this, here is my point. The rivalry is back, my dudes! . It’s back! The Red Sox and the Yankees are the two best teams in the division, two of the three best in the AL and probably two of the best five or six in baseball. This season, this 2018, is going to be another huge brawl of a season. They got Severino, we got Sale. They got Judge, we got Betts. They got Stanton, we got JD. So I thought it might be instructive to look and see how these two teams stack up against each other, a tale-of-the-tape, if you will, or even if you won’t.

Let’s start here. PECOTA. The PECOTA projections are here and they are spectacular. Though maybe not if you’re the Red Sox. I’ve already detailed how the Sox individual projections maybe aren’t as positive as we’d wish they were, but in the end and as we all know, games are won on the field not inside spreadsheets. Which is good, because PECOTA has the Yankees finishing seven games up on the Sox after winning 96 games. By any measure, 89 wins for the Red Sox would be an unsuccessful season, but that’s where things stand as of now. FanGraphs does their own full season projections as well, and theirs are slightly more favorable to Boston (which makes them worth mentioning). They have the Sox at 93 wins, a game behind New York’s 94. Better, but not what we’re looking for.

So let’s go deeper. Let’s go position-by-position and see who has the advantage. I’ll give you the names and their projected WARP in parentheses.

Catcher

Gary Sanchez (4.4) vs. Christian Vazquez (1.7)

This is one of the Yankees’ biggest advantages. Sanchez is, bizarrely as it is to say, perhaps as good a hitter as Judge. Vazquez is a fantastic defensive catcher, but at this point in his career, that’s mostly all he is.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Yankees

First Base

Greg Bird (1.5) vs. Moreland/Ramirez (combined 0.4)

We don’t really know what Greg Bird is as a player yet, but he was as highly touted as Judge was prior to the 2017 season, so there’s some nightmare fuel for Red Sox fans. He missed most of last season with an injury and didn’t hit well upon return, but he’s young and talented so much more is expected of him this season. Moreland is Moreland, and it’s still unclear to me why the Red Sox felt it necessary with a glut of talent available on the market, to give him a two year contract. Best case he and Hanley combine to form the two sides of a successful platoon, so that could happen. Or Hanley could remember that he’s actually a great hitter.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Push

Second Base

Gleyber Torres (0.1) vs. Dustin Pedroia (1.3)

Torres is yet another great Yankee prospect, but for now we don’t know what he is at the major league level. Pedroia is an aging middle infielder coming off of surgery. So who knows on either of these guys.

Picks

PECOTA: Red Sox

Matt: Red Sox

Shortstop

Didi Gregorius (1.7) vs. Xander Bogaerts (1.4)

Ever since he’s put on the pinstripes, Gregorius has continued to get better. Over a similar timeframe Bogaerts’ numbers are going in the opposite direction. I’m still a Xander Believer though, more so than Gregorius who hacks at everything and seems like exactly the kind of hitter the juiced ball turns into something he isn’t.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Red Sox

Third Base

Brandon Drury (0.4) vs. Rafael Devers (1.8)

Drury is Gregorius with a more boring name. He’s got some pop but he doesn’t take walks and he’s not much beyond average defensively. That’s a fine profile for a team with Sanchez, Judge, and Stanton, but it doesn’t move the needle much either way. Devers might be the second best hitter on the Red Sox. He’s that good.

Picks

PECOTA: Red Sox

Matt: Red Sox

Outfield

Left Field: Giancarlo Stanton (3.9) vs. Andrew Benintendi (2.1)

Center Field: Aaron Hicks (1.2) vs. Jackie Bradley (1.0)

Right Field: Aaron Judge (4.0) vs. Mookie Betts (5.2)

We’re doing outfield together because this is getting long. The funny thing to me is that the Red Sox are a team built on the strength of their outfielders. Their best hitter and maybe their second best hitter are both outfielders. Their best fielders are outfielders. This is an outfield-heavy team. And yet, up against the Yankees, the strength of this Boston team falls back. The Yankees won’t be able to keep up with Boston defensively but they won’t be bad there, and what ground they lose there will more than be made up for with their bats. Good lord, those bats. The “ifs” here are health. The Red Sox players haven’t shown any predilection for missing games to injury, but Stanton and Hicks both have missed significant time over their careers.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Yankees

Designated Hitter

Brett Gardner (1.8) vs. JD Martinez (2.9)

I don’t actually know who is going to DH for New York, so I picked the best Yankee projection not included in the above sections and put him here. That’s Gardner. But no leftover Yankee is going to hold a candle to J.D. Martinez in the hitting department.

Picks

PECOTA: Red Sox

Matt: Red Sox

I was going to do the pitching staffs as well, but this has already gone on too long. We’ll leave that for next time. For now, the results. Counting the outfield as three separate positions, PECOTA has Yankees 6, Red Sox 3. I have Red Sox 4, Yankees 4 with 1 push.

Any way you slice this, and I’m sure Yankee fans would disagree with my analysis, it’s close. That we know. PECOTA shows that. FanGraphs shows that. Our eyes show that. It’s going to be another fun season. Buckle the heck up.

You may recall that in my article last week I looked at three primary factors/indicators that bode well for a Red Sox offensive bounce back. The first was age. The Red Sox lineup is mostly young and aging towards their peak seasons or already in their peak seasons. That means improvement is in the offing, very generally speaking. The second was 2018 projections. We will return to this. The third was under/over performance last season. I took the members of the 2018 Sox lineup, looked at what they did last year, and then compared that to what they were projected to do in 2017. This was an attempt to look at how the 2017 team hit compared to what a reasonable expectation would have been at the time. I found that, unsurprisingly, the team under-performed what was expected of them almost across the board.

Two of those three items — the players’ age and their under-performance relative to expectations last season — were true at the time and will remain so after this article. Now to the second item, the 2018 projections. Here’s what I wrote last week about what FanGraphs’ projections said about the Red Sox lineup:

Going by those same rough estimates, of the Red Sox starting nine, FanGraphs projects seven of the Red Sox to improve, five of which significantly. Only Pedroia and Mitch Moreland are projected to improve only slightly from their 2017 performances. Rafael Devers is projected to perform just as he did last season, only to play a full season’s worth of games, which would be a large upgrade over what the Red Sox have been getting from third basemen over the past half decade or more. Only Christian Vazquez is projected to put up a worse performance.

So that’s what FanGraphs has to say. PECOTA, however, sings a very different tune. Of the Red Sox starting nine, which at the moment includes Hanley Ramirez, only two are projected to improve on last year’s WARP total. Those two are Andrew Benintendi (projected to go from 1.8 WARP to 2.5) and the aforementioned Ramirez, who is projected to go from -0.1 WARP to 1.5. Other than that Rafael Devers and Christian Vazquez are both projected at about what they did last season (within 0.1 WARP either way). For Devers that’s problematic because he’s projected for most of a full season in 2018 where as last year he came up in late July. This means he’s projected for less value per plate appearance despite, well, everything about him. For Vazquez, it’s the same story, but in his case it makes more sense. His offense last season had the whiff of unsustainability about it, so should he come back to earth a bit, and thus he would need more playing time to achieve the same value.

The scary part of the projections comes when you look at the meat of the lineup. Mookie Betts is projected to drop a half win. Xander Bogaerts is projected to drop a win. Jackie Bradley is projected to drop 0.2 WARP but he was at 1.2 last season — a number I don’t agree with considering his defense. Mitch Moreland is projected to be worth 0.0 WARP. So that’s your 2018 Red Sox lineup. Only one guy over 2.5 WARP, and just two over 2.0.

This is probably a good time to point out a few things. Firstly, PECOTA doesn’t know Moreland and Xander played through injuries that very much impacted their performance. It only knows their performance, but presumably, with some health, there’s more performance in there for both those guys. It’s a similar story for Jackie Bradley’s knee injury at the start of the season.

Furthermore, these are only projections and conservative projections at that. To pull from another somewhat notable team, Aaron Judge is projected to drop three wins from last season’s total, and Giancarlo Stanton is projected to drop 4.5. So, you know, things could be worse.

On the whole, these will probably be solid projections, but no set of preseason projections is going to be wholly 100 percent correct. The Red Sox offense could be vastly improved over last season’s output, and if I had to guess, that would be where I would go. I still think last season was a dip in what was and is an overall good offensive team. I think more players are closer to their peak-age seasons, and with some more health, a more modern hitting approach implemented by the new hitting coach, and a bit more luck, the team should be better and far more productive in 2018.

That all said, PECOTA’s projections offer a different viewpoint, and indeed, a greater argument for signing someone like J.D. Martinez. Replacing or augmenting Ramirez’s production by adding Martinez could go a long way if indeed the offense falters in the way PECOTA is saying it will.

Then again…

Given the sheer number of free agents out there, all projections, depth charts, and fantasy predictions are kind of moot, aren't they? Either 100-plus guys' careers are over or they're going to sign and kick over all the dominoes. (Pardon my nihilistic mood.)

— Steven Goldman (@GoStevenGoldman) February 8, 2018

Photo by Bob DeChiara — USA TODAY Sports

Let’s look at a few easy ways to make educated guesses.

Age

We know one of the biggest indicators of player quality is age. Hitters tend to improve before age 27, peak at that point or close to it, and decline after. The good news for the Red Sox is they feature a number of players who are not yet 27. Xander Bogaerts (25), Rafael Devers (21), Mookie Betts (25), and Andrew Benintendi (23) are all starters who figure to improve simply based on what we know about aging curves. That’s almost half of the Red Sox lineup. Further, Jackie Bradley (28) and Christian Vazquez (27) are in their peak seasons. This is good!

Beyond, Mitch Moreland (32), Dustin Pedroia (34), and Hanley Ramirez (34) are all likely to decline in the overall skills department. Thing is, Moreland wasn’t all that spectacular last season so much more than a very gentle decline from him would make him close to unplayable. The same goes for Hanley, though he has bounced up and down in terms of quality throughout his career. What’s more, should Martinez come to Boston, both Moreland’s and Hanley’s roles would be somewhat diminished.

Pedroia is the wild card here, though his age alone indicates we shouldn’t be expecting much more than league average production.

Even so, age gives us an overall positive picture of how the 2018 Red Sox offense could look. Betts, Bogaerts, Devers, Benintendi, and perhaps Bradley could all improve, and I think that’s actually relatively likely to happen just based on how their 2017 seasons went as well. That should be more than enough to offset what little production Boston receives from Pedroia, Moreland, and Ramirez.

2018 Projections

PECOTA hasn’t been released yet and I don’t have a copy of the new BP 2018 Annual (which you should definitely buy right this instant) nearby, so regretfully, even though this is BP, we’re going to take a look at FanGraphs. The truth of the matter is, though we like PECOTA around these parts, at this point most projection systems are going to give you roughly the same thing, and that’s all I’m interested in for this exercise: rough estimates.

Going by those same rough estimates, of the Red Sox starting nine, FanGraphs projects seven of the Red Sox to improve, five of which significantly. Only Pedroia and Mitch Moreland are projected to improve only slightly from their 2017 performances. Rafael Devers is projected to perform just as he did last season, only to play a full season’s worth of games, which would be a large upgrade over what the Red Sox have been getting from third basemen over the past half decade or more. Only Christian Vazquez is projected to put up a worse performance.

That roughly matches my expectations for these individual players and it comes close to matching our guesses based simply on player age, which is a factor in the projections as well so there’s admittedly a bit of double counting going on here.

Over/Under Performance

Lastly we can look at how players did last season relative to our expectations. A good proxy for that is the 2017 PECOTA, so let’s look and see how the 2017 Red Sox, our baseline for 2018, did compared to how we expected them to do. I compared the members of the starting lineup’s projected TAv’s to their actual TAv’s. Betts, Benintendi, Hanley, and Bogaerts all came in well below their TAv projections, with Betts and Hanley at their 15th and 10th percentile PECOTA projections for TAv. That’s pretty rough. Bradley and Pedroia were right about where PECOTA pegged them, well, Bradley was a bit worse, but roughly in the vicinity. Only Moreland and Devers beat their projections. Moreland was in the 60th percentile and Devers was in the 95th, which you’d probably expect given he wasn’t supposed to make even a Triple-A roster let alone start for multiple months in the majors.

So this is the part of the article where we try to put some of this information together. Looking at all this, it seems safe to assume a good chunk of the Red Sox starting lineup should be expected, for a variety of reasons, to put up better seasons than they did in 2017. In fact, it’s not just a numerical chunk of the lineup, but the very best players in it, like Betts, Bogaerts, Benintendi, and Bradley. Devers is a bit of a wild card given his youth, as are Ramirez and Moreland for their ages, and Pedroia for his age and injury history. It’s not hard to see Ramirez turning things around, Pedroia getting healthy and hitting better if not returning to his late-aught MVP form. Similarly, this could be the end of the line for these guys. Sometimes baseball doesn’t let you down gently. Sometimes it smashes you into the concrete. But the smart guess is that both Ramirez and Pedroia have something approximating league average hitting left in them.

Add that to a stronger front of the lineup featuring everyone with a surnamed starting with B, and you’ve got a potentially strong lineup. So, do the Red Sox need J.D. Martinez to improve their offense in 2018? I suspect they don’t. I suspect it will get better simply by running the same team out there again. But in a league where the Astros are World Champs and the Yankees are maybe even better than that, it’s hard not to say, well, heck, get J.D. Martinez anyway. Can’t hurt.

Photo by David Kohl — USA TODAY Sports