Players get hurt, players have bad runs, and teams hit patches where it seems every single player can’t do something for a month or more. The crazy thing about baseball is that that stuff happens and it doesn’t mean the team isn’t any good. There was a period of time where, over an 82 game span, the 2004 Red Sox went 41-41. That’s more than half a season of the greatest, most important Red Sox team of all time playing like an utterly forgettable also-ran. In a more specific and urgent sense, none of the stuff that has happened to the 2017 Red Sox is disqualifying for overall success, and indeed it isn’t difficult to see how this team could end up being really good. So let’s look at that!

How could the 2017 Red Sox be really good? To me, this all starts with Chris Sale. Sale isn’t peak Pedro, but he’s as close as Boston has come since the greatest of all time left town. By FanGraphs WAR, the top two seasons ever by a Red Sox starting pitcher are Pedro’s 1999 and 2000 in that order. The next four are by Roger Clemens and the four after that are all by Cy Young. Pedro’s best begins at 11.6 WAR and Young’s worst of his best is 7.7 WAR. Sale is at 6.5 now, and on pace for roughly two more wins between now and the end of the season. That would put him in fourth place all time, ahead of all of Young’s seasons and ahead of three of the Rocket’s four. That’s the kind of amazing season Chris Sale is having: better than any season Cy Young ever had in Boston and better than almost every season from maybe the greatest pitcher ever in Clemens. Now, imagine that guy (Sale) pitching twice in a best-of-five series, or three times in a best-of-seven series. There is a very real opportunity for Sale to have the kind of post-season impact previously reserved for Madison Bumgarner.

After Sale, imagine a healthy David Price! Yes, Drew Pomeranz has been fantastic this season, as good as anyone could’ve hoped, and he’d be fine starting game two, but he’s no healthy David Price, and neither is Rick Porcello or Eduardo Rodriguez. I said at the beginning of the season that David Price’s regular season almost didn’t matter. What mattered is how he pitches when the playoffs come around. His latest arm ailment throws that into question but if Price can get healthy enough to be the Red Sox number two starter, Boston can get three Sale/Price starts in a five game series and five in a seven game series. In other words, the only way the Red Sox lose a playoff round is if someone beats either Sale or Price. While you’re thinking how beatable Price is, remember we’re talking about a pitcher who put up a 2.52 ERA in July while striking out 25 percent of hitters and walking just 6.5 percent. That’s a heck of a number two. Cleveland’s starting staff can’t compete with that and neither can Houston’s, and that’s before we’ve even discussed what Eduardo Rodriguez or Drew Pomeranz can do.

The main competition for the Red Sox in the AL this season comes from the Indians, Astros, and Yankees. You could argue that the Red Sox advantage in starting pitching isn’t so big because the Indians have Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco (and they do), while the Astros have Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers (and they do). Except neither first starter is in the same league as Chris Sale (though Kluber isn’t far off), and neither second starter is nearly as good as a healthy David Price. If Price comes back healthy, he represents a huge advantage for the Red Sox in the post-season.

The same could also be said of Craig Kimbrel. We’ve all seen the impact relievers can have in the post-season, and with Kimbrel authoring one of the best reliever seasons we’ve seen in Boston in a long time, the opportunity for him to have an out-sized impact on the Red Sox’s postseason fortunes exists. The fact that manager John Farrell has occasionally been willing to use Kimbrel for longer outings and earlier in games when the leverage is higher during the regular season, and that bodes well for the same strong usage patterns in the playoffs. The fact that the Red Sox bullpen has been so good this season doesn’t hurt either, as they are equipped to cover for Kimbrel in the ninth should he be needed earlier in the game.

Finally we get to the offense which, there’s really no other way to put it, has underwhelmed this season. Coming off a July that saw Boston collectively hit a profoundly mediocre .248/.315/.367 (and honestly I’m shocked it’s that high), the mood surrounding the offense was understandably pessimistic. However, in the seven games since July ended (with six of those admittedly coming against the garbage White Sox), Boston has hit .288/.357/.559. They’re not that good they’re absolutely able to get that hot for periods of time, such as, oh I don’t know, five or seven game stretches.

Individually, we’ve seen odd seasons from Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts featuring less power than we know is there. The same could be said, in fact, of Jackie Bradley, Dustin Pedroia, Mitch Moreland, and even though maybe unfairly, Andrew Benintendi. That’s quite a group of players for whom a collective small bump towards career average could mean a substantial uptick in team offensive production.

Put it all together and you’ve got a team with a potentially dominating top of the rotation, a fantastic bullpen (and imagine, if Price does get healthy, how adding Pomeranz to the pen would look), and offense that’s over due for a break out. The ’04 team’s comeback against the Yankees, the ’07 team’s comeback against the Indians, and pretty much every damn thing about the 2013 team teach us that in the baseball playoffs you never know what can happen. But it’s not all luck, despite Billy Beane’s famous statement. Having Madison Bumgarner can help. Having Keith Foulke doesn’t hurt. The Red Sox have reasonable facsimiles of those guys, and a lineup with the capability to get moving at a more productive clip. It’s not hard to squint into the sun and see this Red Sox team doing something we haven’t seen since the august October of 2013. So when it happens, if it happens, you can be shocked, you can be surprised, you can be euphoric, but don’t say nobody ever saw it coming.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports

Ortiz’s 34 will be the tenth number retired by the organization; tied with the Braves, Dodgers, Reds, and White Sox for the third-most numbers retired. The Yankees lead the way with 22 retired numbers. Ortiz’s number retirement will be the soonest the organization has retired a number following the player’s career. We haven’t even gone one full season without Big Papi taking hacks in his red socks, and not a day goes by without mention of how much the offense misses him. I don’t mean to insinuate that the team should wait some pre-determined (and mostly arbitrary) period of time following the player’s time in the game, I just think the quick turnaround for Ortiz is interesting. In any case, the honor Ortiz is set to receive led me down a rabbit hole of uniform number exploration (thanks Baseball Reference!), and got me thinking about other numbers the Red Sox organization could (or should) retire.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the distribution of numbers worn by Red Sox players follows pretty closely with that of the league. The high-teens through the thirties are most popular, and few players wear anything above 50, and most above 65 are one-offs for call-ups and eventually get changed or recycled. Number 28 has been worn by 56 different Red Sox players, which is the most. Oddly enough, should 28 ever get posted up next to Yaz, Teddy and the other fellas in right field, Doug Mirabelli is the player who probably has the strongest claim to it being his honor; he was mostly a personal catcher, but I suppose the team did commandeer local police to help get him to the ballpark that one time, so he must have been special. The next most worn numbers are 15 and 19, each of which have been worn by 54 players, although for 15 it seems like a decent bet that total will stop increasing given the current owner’s place in team lore. More on that in a bit. There are a bunch of numbers that have yet to be worn by a Red Sox player: 0, 69 (leading a whole bunch of people on Twitter to exclaim ‘not-nice’; but don’t worry, some have worn it), 74, 75, 79, 80, 86-90, 92, 93, and 95-99.

Of all these uniform numbers worn by Red Sox players are there any that have (at least) an (moderately) interesting case for retirement? I think there are a couple that have a real shot, and a few that are fun to discuss. To be clear, I am not suggesting that all (or necessarily any) of the numbers discussed below should get retired, just that there is a discussion to be had for some of them and if they did get retired these are the players who should draw the honor. There are a few numbers where there is an obvious choice, one where there is a tossup between two players, a few intriguing “What ifs”, and of course some ambitious projections from the current team.

The Clear-Cut Options

5, 15, 20, 23, 33, and 49. Who comes to mind as you pass through that list? Was it Nomar Garciaparra, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Luis Tiant, Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield? If not, then we disagree. For me, these guys are the clear options for their numbers. Nomar was the face of the franchise during the initial years of the recent two-decades-long run of success and is arguably the best shortstop the team has ever had. As I mentioned above, I think there is a chance that number 15 ends with Dustin Pedroia. He has spent his entire career with the organization, during which he has won a Rookie-of-the-Year and MVP award, two World Series Championships, always been in the discussion as one of the five-best second baseman in the game, and, if his career ended tomorrow, already has a fringy Hall of Fame case. Of the six numbers listed in this section, 15 is likely the only one with any real chance of being retired.

The other guys, like Nomar, were all really good and special parts of the Red Sox teams for which they played, but unlikely to get the honor. Kevin Youkilis was the bald-scowling face of the on-base percentage movement that came about in the early-to-mid-2000s – “Greek God of Walks” remains one of the dumber nicknames we have seen, but is representative of how he was perceived. He played excellent defense at both corner infield spots, was the subject of an incredible moment in broadcasting, did not get along with Bobby Valentine, and married Tom Brady’s sister. All around good guy, that Youk. I was not around to have watched much of Luis Tiant, but his twirling deliveries, importance to the Cuban baseball community, and performances in the 1975 World Series all stand out to me. Finally you have The Captain, Jason Varitek, who spent 13 seasons in Boston, guided the pitching staffs through two Championship seasons, and, in a moment that will never be forgotten, cleaned a few crumbs off of Alex Rodriguez’s face. Wakefield was also a part of two championship teams and did it all in his 19 seasons in Boston. He started, he relieved, he was even the closer for a while, which seems ludicrous when compared with today’s world of the blow-you-away fastball monsters who end games. A thing I truly respected about Wake was that he ate innings when he (or others) was getting rocked, which often kept the team in the next day’s game. Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS is a good example. Without Wake taking one for the team in Game 3, those extra inning affairs in Games 4 and 5 might go differently.

The Tossup

24. Number 24 is perhaps the most interesting situation of any number. Like 15 above, I think it should have an actual chance at retirement. The difficulty is that there are two players who have a serious claim on this number: Dwight Evans and Manny Ramirez. Both are Hall of Fame worthy players, although Evans has already been passed over for enshrinement, and Manny will likely miss out due to his indulgence in “home run hitting pills”. Evans played in Boston for 19 seasons, made three All-Star teams, offered excellent defense in right field, and was consistently above-average with the bat. Manny only played in Boston for eight years, but made the All-Star team every year, was an offensive force on two Championship teams, and offered high-comedy on defense in left field. Manny was David Ortiz’s partner in mashing opposing pitching, so it would be neat to see their numbers posted on the wall together forever, but in the end, if 24 gets posted in right field, it is probably to honor Evans. Ideally, David Price will turn things around, pitch like we know he can for the next six years, and make the discussion of number 24 even more complex.

The What Ifs

21 and 29. What if Roger Clemens stayed in Boston after the 1996 season and never signed in Toronto or eventually with the Yankees? Clemens is arguably the greatest right-handed pitcher to ever play. Were it not for his indulgence in “home run preventing pills”, he would already be enshrined in Cooperstown. Perhaps that, and the going to New York thing, is what is holding-up the powers-that-make-these-decisions from posting 21 on the facade. Nobody has worn 21 since he left in 1996, so the number has been functionally retired for a while. Maybe it is time to explicitly honor the man. What if Adrian Beltre was not a one-and-done in Boston? As you may have heard, third base has been an unmitigated disaster since he left. Nobody else who wore 29 for the Red Sox really stands out – Keith Foulke? So had Beltre stayed and kept crushing bombs over the monster from one knee, performing as he has in Texas, continuing his clear path to Cooperstown, perhaps we would think of him when thinking of 29. Ugh. Life with Beltre at third for the last seven years is an alternate timeline I wish we could explore.

The Current Group

2, 16, 41, and 50. Xander Bogaerts has only Jacoby Ellsbury (and maybe Jerry Remy) to surpass to ensure he is the primary 2 in our hearts. I irrationally love Andrew Benintendi, so sure let’s consider retiring 16 in his honor after he has only played 66 games in the uniform. While we are acting crazy, how about Chris Sale and number 41? There are not many stand out 41s in Red Sox history. If he can strikeout 10 batters per start for the Red Sox for the next three years and beyond, then why not him? In three-plus seasons, Mookie Betts already has more career wins above replacement player (17.5) than any other player who wore number 50 for the Red Sox other than Jamie Moyer (58.6), who only wore it for one year in 1996. Mookie is on a strong path to making 50 his and having it posted alongside David Ortiz’s 34.

Regardless of my trip down uniform number memory lane, tomorrow night will be about David Ortiz and his number 34. He was a force in the middle of the Red Sox lineup for 14 years. He contributed 52.5 wins above replacement, basically all with his bat. In his Red Sox career he posted a .290/.386/.570 (.956 OPS), mashed 483 home runs, and helped the team win three rings. I subscribe to the idea that players are not clutch, but can have clutch moments. Well, Ortiz had enough moments to push me to believe that he is, in fact, clutch. Seriously, there were so many incredible moments. He hit .688/.760/1.188 in the 2013 World Series. That is just silly. He was so much fun to watch. It will be fun to celebrate him once more tomorrow night.

Photo by Kim Klement – USA TODAY Sports

Recently on BP Boston’s own Red Seat Podcast, the discussion turned to to where Ortiz fits in all time in the Red Sox organization. Given where we are in Ortiz’s career, it’s a worthwhile and interesting topic (listen to the podcast here), and I wanted to chime in. Ortiz has been an amazing player, but the highest single season OPS+ of his career is 173. That’s incredibly good, but Ted Williams averaged an OPS+ of 190. Averaged! Williams had seven seasons with an OPS+ over 200. That means he was literally twice as good as the average player in seven seasons of his career. Ortiz has been having perhaps the best final season of any player, hitting .321/.406/.632. That’s an OPS 65 percent above league average. Williams, in his final season, at age-41, hit .316/.451/.645. That’s an OPS 90 percent above league average. Can you fathom that? I can’t.

And that might be the problem. After watching David Ortiz over the last 14 years, it’s hard to imagine anyone better than him, let alone substantially better. But Williams was, and when you look at it, there’s really no argument against him. Look at career WAR (we can’t use WARP because it only goes back to 1950). Ortiz is at 55.5, a number that, let’s admit, is partially dragged down by the DH penalty. Williams though, in his career, put up 123.1. If you add 20 extra WAR to Ortiz’s number, which you can’t do, but if you did, it still wouldn’t be close to Williams’. Williams was that good, and it’s difficult, I think, for us to imagine a player being that good unless we saw him do it with our own eyes. We’ve seen Ortiz work his magic but most of us never saw Williams.

After watching David Ortiz over the last 14 years, it’s hard to imagine anyone better than him, let alone substantially better.

“Okay, Matt,” you say. “Fine. Use WAR to make your point. But what about all the things Ortiz has done that WAR doesn’t capture? The off-the-field things, like his speech after the Marathon Bombings, his rallying of the team in the 2013 ALCS, and all his clutch post-season hits?” You’re absolutely right. Those are all very important and WAR does not, by itself, take the measure of a player’s career. Ortiz’s post-season glory will be, I think, his ultimate ticket into the Hall of Fame, and there aren’t many (any?) players who can match that part of his resume. Certainly Williams can’t. And Ortiz’s powerful speech that helped, as much as it could, heal the city after those horrific and monstrous events, is a true credit to the man, and yet another in a long list of reasons why we love David Ortiz.

But we’re talking about the greatest player in Red Sox history. Those things move the needle, for sure, but Williams was so much better than Ortiz on the field that you’d have to put your hand on the scale and then pretty much sit on the scale to get Ortiz even close. And that’s before we consider what Williams did off the field. Williams helped start the Jimmy Fund, which has raised more than $750 million to fight pediatric cancer since its founding in 1948. Williams frequently visited sick children in the hospital and is personally responsible for helping raise millions of dollars to help fight the disease. Williams is also a war hero (he’s a WAR hero also, but we’ve already discussed that). In fact, he was a war hero twice. He missed the 1943, ‘44, and ‘45 seasons to serve in World War II as a fighter pilot. Then, he missed most of the 1952 and ‘53 seasons to serve again, this time in the Korean War. It’s not hard to imagine that, had Williams played those five seasons instead of serving his country, he’d have hit another 150 home runs or more. What is hard to imagine is a player voluntarily giving up his age-24, 25, 26, and most of his age-33, and 34 seasons when his country needed him.

And really this comparison is an almost impossible one for Ortiz, because Williams isn’t just the greatest Red Sox of all time, he’s the greatest hitter of all time. After Williams though, the list doesn’t get much easier. Roger Clemens is demonstrably one of the five greatest pitchers of all time. Pedro Martinez is probably the greatest pitcher ever over a six- or seven-season peak. Again, Ortiz is great, but I don’t see how he bests either. It’s like running a race where before you start you know you can’t finish any higher than fourth. That’s an unfair standard to hold Ortiz to, but that’s how it goes when you put on a Red Sox uniform.

About the only argument for Ortiz is what he did in the postseason and the teams he was a part of. And that’s really the rub. He was a part of those championship teams, but he was not the team all by himself. His performances in the postseason will stand the test of time but he doesn’t win in 2004 without Manny, without Foulke, without Derek Lowe, and on and on. The Red Sox don’t win without him either, but he can’t get full credit. That’s not how team sports work. The same is true of 2007 and 2013, too.

There are few feelings in my life I hold closer than the joy of beating the Yankees in 2004 and winning the World Series immediately after. I made damn sure I was at the parade that year and it was amazing. I stood in the cold rain with the rest of Red Sox nation and saw Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez, Mark Bellhorn (LOVE Mark Bellhorn), Curt Schilling, Keith Foulke, Johnny Damon, and Theo Epstein, the Boston boy who grew up to put the team together, float through the city and down the river on duckboats and into history. That team, man. That team! So much amazing about that team, but perhaps the most remarkable thing is that Boston had never before put together a team remotely that good since the Red Sox dominated the sport back in the 1900s and 1910s. The other greats in Red Sox history never had a chance to play on a team of that caliber and when looking back through the annals of the franchise it’s not fair to hold that against them.

David Ortiz has been a great player, and hopefully he will remain so for at least another month and a week. He deserves all the adulation and the ceremonies he’s receiving, but he’s not the greatest Red Sox of all time. That’s no insult. Making the list at all is impressive.

Photo by Winslow Towson/USA Today Sports Images

David Price’s mechanics have been a hot topic recently, and Clemens visited the NESN booth on Thursday night to weigh in on them. It was, sadly, wonderful. I’m not sure I’m ready to have Clemens back in my life, but maybe we’ve finally turned the corner. Is the Rogerssaince at hand? Will he be a regular presence in our lives, and our booth? And if so, can he take over for Steve Lyons?

Mike Cole’s NESN.com writeup of Clemens’s visit is all extremely good stuff, but here’s just one long example, on Price’s newly tilted delivery, and how his new alignment might help him deceive batters easily:

“You love that. He’s going to hide the ball. That’s what makes his ball explode and a hitter not to see his ball until extremely late. If you look, for example, if you find video of (Jake) Arrieta in Chicago right now, tremendous tilt, tremendous close on the ball, and you won’t see the ball come off his fingertips until late.” […]

“We’ve got guys in the league who throw extremely hard and the guys I play with, and (when I was playing) I’d run in the outfield the next day and I asked hitters why guys throwing 98 mph with a great hook (would get hit), but the guys say ‘We see the ball extremely well off them,’ because they’re not staying closed,” Clemens said. “That steering wheel’s not staying closed.”

The stats seem to indicate that keeping the steering wheel closed has been a problem. And it appears he’s been working on those mechanics:

A side-by-side of David Price’s windup from tonight and his last start. pic.twitter.com/88FhuukwJ0

— Joon Lee (@iamjoonlee) May 13, 2016

It would help explain why, exactly, Price has been allowing so much hard contact, a subject into which Tony Blengino delved last week on FanGraphs. His question was “Is It Time to Worry About David Price?” and to start with the last part first, here was his answer (basically, “no”):

We aren’t seeing the beginning of the end for Price. Take a step back — even with such horrible contact-management performance thus far in 2016, he’s still an above-average starting pitcher. He won’t ever, however, be a superior contact manager, and that will continue to keep him out of the game’s innermost circle of starting pitching elite. In fact, we may be watching his decline from a slightly above-average contact manager to a slightly below-average one, and from a 70-80 “tru” ERA- guy to an 80-90 one.

So how did we get here? Well, the good news is that we might not be here for long: While Price’s numbers are down, these things are still random enough, Blengino writes:

The big issue here is his unsightly line-drive rate, way up at 29.1%. The only surprise here is that two AL starters actually have higher liner rates allowed. This explains some, but not nearly all, of Price’s difficulties to date in 2016. The good news is that liner rates, unlike the other frequencies listed above, are quite variable from year to year for most pitchers. The bad news is that Price’s liner-rate percentile rank in 2015 was a similarly high 81. Price’s vulnerability to squared-up contact is becoming a thing.

And now for the LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR you point, the one that could keep you up at night:

Just 7.0% of all MLB fly balls have been at hit at 105 mph or harder this season. Of the flies allowed by Price, 16.7% have exceeded the 105-mph mark. That’s a problem, as hitters bat .920 AVG-.3.428 SLG on such fly balls.

Yikes. That’s scary. Hopefully a combination of Dustin Pedroia’s Jedi powers, a possible ball-hiding scheme and natural fluctuation, might solve, or help to solve, Price’s issue with hard-hit balls. On the bright side, there’s reason to think he might be the Price who was promised, as he’s turning up the propane:  

David Price hit a game-high 96 during his strikeout of Carlos Correa, his ninth whiff of the game. — Brian MacPherson (@brianmacp) May 13, 2016

Finally, there are two Price-centric reports I’d like to touch on, because they deserve a response. The first is from the Globe’s reliable Red Sox reporter Alex Speier, who made a natural comparison between CC Sabathia and David Price but framed it in a strange way. “CC Sabathia represents a cautionary tale and hope for David Price” is odd from start to finish.

I’m not sure why Sabathia would represent a “cautionary tale” for Price, because Sabathia has had a long and distinguished career, even on the Yankees. That leaves two ways to read it. The first is as a caution for Price not to get old. Great idea; tough in practice. The second — the area in which Sabathia actually presents a cautionary tale, albeit an uncommonly forthcoming one — is in the area of depression and alcohol abuse, and it’s clearly not what Speier was referring to. But it’s the only part that fits the bill.

Long story short: I’d be mostly cool if Price ended up like Sabathia.

This is, I hope, helpful nitpicking: Speier’s report was in the service of honesty and decency, and there’s no malice there. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the ESPN E:60 segment about Price that aired this week. I watched it yesterday in search of Price news, not realizing that it was basically a recycled version of a 2008 piece for the same newsmagazine program, with new bits about Price’s antagonistic historical rivalry with the Sox and Big Papi grafted onto the beginning and end.

The piece made me sad, and that is largely the point. It is a puff piece and a tear jerker. It covers the deeply tragic story of the deaths of Price’s two childhood best friends, who died independently of each other, both in their early 20s, just as Price was nearing his big-league debut. It seems to have, understandably, messed Price up to the point of considering retirement, as this trailer implies.

The only problem is that it isn’t true. Price “almost” quit baseball, as the segment itself reports, “to work at McDonald’s” — a line Michael Smith implausibly takes at face value, or did in 2008 — because he was a homesick kid at college who cried on some phone calls home, which is singularly unremarkable but given the same treatment as the deaths of Price’s friends: the music, the foreboding, all of it. Don’t take my word for it: You can watch these terrible transitions for yourself here.

This is a bad segment, a manipulation of the real tragedy, and totally unnecessary. It is taking something bad and making it worse. In the words of Ray Smuckles, it is not your business to turn out a funeral. You’d think ESPN would have learned this exact lesson from its Dr. V debacle, but, as always, they’re counting on you simply not to think at all.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images

Going Deep

The long-dreaded, yet inevitable, happened for the Red Sox last week — David Ortiz announced he will retire at the end of the 2016 season. The news came as little surprise.

Ortiz is 40 years old and, after hitting his 500th home run in September, has pretty much reached every possible career milestone. But it does leave the Sox with questions beyond 2016. CSNNE.com’s Sean McAdam asked perhaps the biggest one — where will the Red Sox’s power come from in the post-Ortiz era? That answer seemed clear entering spring training last season. The Sox signed Hanley Ramirez to a four-year deal with the expectation that he would DH when Ortiz retires and, at least partially, fill the power-hitting void left by Big Papi. That seems unlikely now. Ramirez hit 10 home runs in April and finished with 19 for the year in what was a dreadful season both in the field and at the plate. The best-case scenario is that Ramirez is traded and never seen in a Red Sox uniform again. Let’s pretend that’s the case for a minute and leave him out of the mix. So who’s next? (Before considering this answer, let’s remember there’s really no replacing Ortiz, who hit 37 home runs with a .280 ISO — good for sixth in all of baseball — at 39 years old last season, especially when we’re looking at it from a power-hitting standpoint.)

Right now it’s Mookie Betts. Betts hit 18 home runs, eight of which came in the final 58 games of the season, and finished second among qualified Red Sox players with a .188 ISO. The now-23-year-old struggled at the plate over the first two months before turning it around considerably. The idea is that he is only going to get better. The next-best options are unproven minor leaguers. First there’s Sam Travis. He’s big, strong and has a long swing, but that’s yet to translate into power hitting (he posted a .136 ISO in 281 plate appearances with Double-A Portland). Then, of course, there’s Andrew Benintendi, whom the Sox drafted in the first round last June. His 239 plate appearances between Lowell and Greenville is a small sample size, but his production — a .250 ISO in Lowell and .230 in Greenville — was no joke. The problem, however, is that he may be years away from being major-league ready. Perhaps we’ll see Ortiz’s true value once he’s no longer in the lineup every day.

This offseason isn’t the first in which the Red Sox are in pursuit of an ace. But, as Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald points out, the way in which they expect to do it is unfamiliar territory for both the franchise and Dave Dombrowski. The last 20 years show that the Sox have been most successful when acquiring elite starting pitching via trade. It’s how they landed Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett, all three of whom were instrumental to World Series championships. Their most recent ace, Jon Lester, was homegrown. This offseason, it appears the most likely way the Red Sox will land a No. 1 starter will be via free agency, whether they sign Johnny Cueto, Jordan Zimmerman, Zack Greinke or David Price. That’s something the modern Red Sox, and Dombroski, don’t normally do. The last top-of-the-rotation starter the Sox signed as a free agent was John Lackey. By then Lester was already in place as the No. 1. Other free-agent signings included Daisuke Matsuzaka and Matt Clement. Not exactly ace-quality right there.

Dombrowski’s Tiger teams were no different. Justin Verlander was homegrown, while Max Scherzer, Doug Fister and Price were all traded for. Why exactly are these such uncharted waters for the Sox and Dombrowski? Perhaps it’s the risk that comes with it. Just look at last season’s free-agent class. Scherzer signed with the Nationals for $210 million over seven years, while Jon Lester inked a six-year, $155 million deal with the Cubs. Both pitchers had solid first seasons with their new teams, but it’s how the coming years play out that’ll determine if the contracts were worth it. Meanwhile, James Shields had one of his worst statistical seasons in 2015 after signing a four-year, $75 million deal with the Padres. The Sox will need to spend Lester or even Scherzer money to land one of the top pitchers on the market. But first they need to determine who’s worth the risk.

Quick Hits

MassLive.com’s Christopher Smith makes the case for Greinke as the Red Sox’s top pitching target. Greinke had perhaps his best season in 2015, posting a 2.79 FIP, 7.6 WARP and finishing second in the NL Cy Young race. Last season wasn’t a fluke, either. Greinke may have occasionally flown under the radar pitching in the same rotation as Clayton Kershaw, but his three years with the Dodgers were some of his best, as he finished with a 2.97 FIP and 8.3 K/9 over a combined 602.2 innings. The righty has proven he can also do it in the American League, where he pitched with the Royals over the first seven seasons of his career and won a Cy Young in 2009. The one potential issue with Greinke is his battle with social anxiety disorder. But that’s a moot point given he how he handled the pressures of pitching in the Los Angeles market, as Chad Finn of Boston.com pointed out.

Don’t think we’re done talking about starting pitching just yet. The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier wrote an interesting piece on when the right time to trade a back-of-the-rotation starter is. The Red Sox certainly have a bevvy of those kind of pitchers. That will become more apparent if and when they acquire a No. 1 starter. That means someone will have to go. Speier explains why the Sox may be best served waiting until the middle of next season to strike a deal, citing the Cubs’ July 2013 acquisition of a little-known Jake Arrieta in exchange for Scott Feldman as a reason to be patient.  

Reliever Pat Light was one of three prospects added to the team’s 40-man roster last Friday. The 24-year-old righty has never been among the team’s top prospects since being drafted in 2012 and had an unspectacular 2015 season, especially in Triple-A where he posted a 4.28 FIP and an ugly 7.09 BB/9 in 26 relief appearances. But, as WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford writes, Light gives the Sox another hard-throwing arm out of the bullpen. Light’s fastball, which sits in the mid-to-upper 90s, is a commodity among pitchers that helped him average a 9.55 K/9 in Pawtucket. It appears to be an asset the Red Sox desire in their bullpen reconstruction after trading for Craig Kimbrel nearly two weeks ago. Unlike Kimbrel, of course, Light is young and unproven, just like Matt Barnes, who also lives and dies by a mid-90s fastball, was last season before finishing with a 5.23 FIP over 43 innings. That’s not to say Light will be like Barnes if he pitches in Boston next season. But you’ve been warned.

Not everyone was on board with the Kimbrel trade. The reason for that is the hefty batch of prospects the Sox were forced to give up in order to get him, most notably Manuel Margot and Javier Guerra. The Providence Journal’s Tim Britton analyzed what exactly the Red Sox lost in Margot and Guerra. Margot was one of the top-rated prospects in the organization last season. He’s a speedy, athletic outfielder with power potential, but his aggressiveness at the plate caught up with him in a disappointing stint in Double-A. The good news for Margot is he’s 21 years old and has time to improve his approach and reach his ceiling. Guerra was always touted for his defensive prowess at shortstop, but he was a pleasant surprise at the plate, where he finished with a .354 wOBA and 15 home runs in Low-A Greenville. The Red Sox, however, could afford to part ways with Guerra given Xander Bogaerts’ stranglehold on short for years to come.

It wouldn’t be Read Sox without a Roger Clemens reference, right? Rocket has an interesting place in Boston sports lore. He spent 13 stellar seasons as the team’s homegrown ace, but his most controversial moments came as a member of the Yankees with the rivalry at its peak. Then there was that whole steroids thing. If you’re under 25 (like me), you probably don’t like Clemens and see no place for him in the Hall of Fame. But if he were to be voted in, he’d don a Red Sox cap on his plaque — at least that’s what he said in a radio interview last week. Now that would be quite a sight.

Dave Roberts was named manager of the Dodgers on Monday. I bring this up as an excuse to relive the biggest stolen base in Red Sox history. Enjoy!

Though it may not be true of Red Sox fans, many baseball observers may forget that more than half of Clemens’ storied career came with Boston, especially with how much press had been given to his later exploits. The Rocket spent 13 of his 24 seasons playing home games at Fenway, and posted enough quality numbers that he could have retired after 1996 as a legitimate Hall-of-Famer, before ever suiting up for the Blue Jays, Astros, and (ugh) Yankees.

Let’s forget about the scowls, the PED accusations, and the Suzyn Waldman hyperbolic calls for a little while, and focus on the skill … and the numbers. When the narrative is boiled away and we distill the hurler’s career into the digits and the performances, we can see real greatness from a combination of consistency and skill.

1984-1985: Ramping Up

The first two seasons of Clemens’ career were good — don’t get me wrong — but they hardly indicated what would come of the next 22. Coming out of the University of Texas, Clemens made his debut in May of 1984, and immediately had an exceptional impact. Most pitchers don’t start their careers spitting hot fire, but Clemens was most certainly not most pitchers. We can use cFIP — a metric that uses context and fielding-independent peripherals like strikeouts and walks and home runs — to measure the “true talent level” of a pitcher over the course of a season. Clemens’s cFIP in his 20 starts in 1984 was 56, a truly exceptional number. That’s a Kershaw-esque score … think Matt Harvey in 2013, only slightly better than that.

Clemens pitched well in ‘85 too, but he wasn’t as skillful as the previous year in a limited 15-start run. In both of these first two seasons, he showed glimpses of the pitcher he would become in his underlying peripherals. His Deserved Run Average (DRA) — a measure of how many runs he should’ve given up on a rate basis — was between 3.54 and 3.60 … which was good, but not otherworldly. Otherwordly would have to come later.

1986-1988: The Best In The World

To many, 1986 was the “big one” for the Rocket. You know about his 24 wins, most likely, and you probably also know about the Red Sox’s run to the World Series. Clemens took home all the hardware in this season: the Cy Young, the MVP, an All-Star selection … well, he missed out on that big October trophy, but picked up most everything else. The stats were stellar, of course: he led the AL in wins, ERA, FIP (which wasn’t really a thing back then), and WHIP among qualified starters. This could be considered the peak of his powers.

He’d get better.

Clemens would be the best pitcher in baseball by DRA and cFIP in each of the next two seasons as well. Oh sure, he deserved his Cy Young award in 1987 (281.7 innings, 2.97 ERA, 2.91 FIP, 3.08 DRA), but his 1988 season was a true masterpiece. In that year, despite only finishing sixth in Cy Young voting, he put up one of the greatest individual pitching seasons of the last half-century.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking … how could that possibly be the case when a guy posts a good, but not-legendary 2.93 ERA? Well, look at the underlying peripherals. In this, an offense-heavy year, in an offense-heavy park, Roger also threw for a 2.23 FIP and a 44 cFIP. That cFIP, in particular, makes my head spin. A cFIP of 70 or lower is considered superb. 44? That’s magical. Randy Johnson beat that during his unreal 1995 season. Both Pedro Martinez and RJ topped it in both 2000 and 2001. Curt Schilling in 2002. And that’s it for better cFIP performances since ‘88. Roger’s ‘88 season demonstrated more raw talent than all but six others since that time. And he threw a boatload of innings, making him worth 10 Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP). That’s remarkable, especially for a pitcher.

Posting a cumulative 26.4 WARP in just three seasons is straight-up amazing.  Let’s try to put it in perspective. If you could gather up all the value that Jon Lester ever had while wearing a Red Sox uniform — and yeah, let’s include all those postseason innings — and then mashed them into three seasons, that’s what you’d get in those Clemens years. All of Jon Lester’s career value, distilled into three fabulous years.

1989-1992: Just Pretty Great

I’d say that from a statistical perspective, Clemens would never again reach the heights of his 1988 season, or of the combined majesty of ‘86-’88. But the next several years were nothing to sneeze at either. ‘89 was a bit of a down season, as a worsened walk rate (8.9%) diminished his ability to keep his overall peripherals down, and raised his ERA a hair. Still, his performance was solid, and he more than earned his share of value.

The next three seasons were a blur of excellence, three top-3 Cy Young finishes (one win in 1991) and a remarkable run of consistency (31+ games started in each season) revealed  a true, definitive ace in every sense of the word. Was Clemens the best pitcher in baseball over each of those three seasons by the metrics I’ve been citing in this piece? Nope: Just two of them (1990 and 1991). By 1992, other, younger starters like Greg Maddux and Charles Nagy (what?) had eclipsed Clemens’ single-season performance … but make no mistake, the Rocket was still an amazing force.

When looking at the Rocket’s performance in each season, he was dominant, and often the best hurler in the game. But in the aggregate, over all the seasons to this point? Forget it. No other pitcher had the combination of innings pitched, runs allowed (or in his case, not allowed), and pure talent via the strikeout. His run from ‘86 to ‘92 could be considered one of the best seven-season runs in the history of the game. For comparison’s sake, here’s Roger’s seven years compared to Clayton Kershaw’s last seven:

Remember how when you’ve watched Clayton Kershaw over the past few years, you were amazed? And how analysts and announcers keep talking about what a transcendent, legendary talent he is? Well, yeah, Roger Clemens basically did that too. Only over an extra 300 innings. Because he was amazing.

1993-1996: Twilight

All good things must come to an end, but little did anyone know that the twilight of Roger’s Red Sox career would just be the midpoint of the whole thing. And yet, 1993 started a downward trend — at least for a little while — that ended Roger as the gold standard of all pitchers. From here, he looked more like an average-ish pitcher in some seasons, and a star in others.

For the next three seasons, Roger’s signature durability wavered, and he didn’t cross the 200-inning threshold again until 1996. In addition, when he was on the bump, he wasn’t the same exact pitcher. In 1993 he posted a 4.46 ERA (and 4.21 DRA). In 1995, he was — dare I say it — average! He only posted 1.8 WARP, and looked more Roger Rabbit than Roger Clemens. 1994 wasn’t bad at all — he was quite effective, if limited in innings — and 1996 saw a real return to ace-level form. During that last, fateful season in Fenway, Roger was the same guy he was during his best years. His DRA was 3.24 and his cFIP was 63, which is shorthand for this: he was one of the five best pitchers in baseball once again, and a Hall-of-Fame-style ace.

But, after 1996, JNCOs were NOT cool, but Clemens was. He famously took a four-year $40-million contract with the Blue Jays that ended his career in Boston and separated him from the team he had come to define. It’s fair to say that while there was the expectation that he would have a solid finish to his career, few expected Clemens to post 11 more seasons and over 2,000 more innings. (Especially at such a high level of performance.)

Upon arriving in Toronto, Roger immediately recaptured some of his peak-performance magic, earning two straight Cy Young awards and cementing his reputation as an all-timer. That could have been the nice finish to a 15-year career, but Clemens moved on to the Yankees to win two World Series, pad his resume, and put the finishing touches on his all-time stats. He won another Cy Young for his hometown Astros, but never reached the same peaks he had during his best years with the Sox.

If you can look at the overall body of work over those first 13 seasons, the results are pretty astounding. First, 2,776 innings pitched was more than any other pitcher in baseball over that timeframe, so even despite his injury-marred seasons, he dropped more fastballs in than just about anyone else (only Mark Langston was particularly close). His ERA over the span (3.06) was equally impressive, only bested over that period by the criminally-underrated John Tudor — who only pitched 1160 innings  — and Greg Maddux. His FIP in that timeframe (2.94) was third in baseball as well, behind Nolan Ryan and Doc Gooden.

And, of course, there’s the ultimate measure of his overall value: WARP. His WARP with the Red Sox was 72.9. In perspective, John Smoltz’s career WARP is 68.0. Tom Glavine’s is 62.2. Roger earned more value as a member of the Red Sox than either of those players did during their entire careers … at least according to BP’s metric.

That doesn’t even account for the 20-strikeout games — games which are arguably among the greatest single-game performances in the history of baseball. Anyone can throw a no-hitter — we see nearly four per season these days — but only two pitchers have ever struck out 20 hitters in a game: Kerry Wood and Clemens.

Of course, Clemens did it twice — both times in Boston, and over 10 years apart.

Since Clemens left Boston, the memories have been mixed. Never the most popular fan-favorite, few pitchers in history delivered more value to a team than the Rocket. No player has worn Roger’s #21 since his exit from Fenway, and that makes a lot of sense. Despite any personal feelings fans might carry about the man, his performance in a Red Sox uniform was an unparalleled combination of longevity and effectiveness from a starting pitcher. Only Pedro Martinez came close in modern times, and Pedro pitched for roughly half as long in navy and red as Roger.

On an overall value basis, Clemens is likely the most valuable Red Sox pitcher of all time. The power of his fastball was undeniable, and the impact he had on so many Sox games will stand for decades to come.

Photo by Bob DeChiara/USA Today Sports Images