Reason for optimism: Chris Sale replaces Clay Buchholz's production.
Reason for pessimism: Mitch Moreland replaces David Ortiz's production.
Worst, first, worst, worst, first. Man, the Red Sox's annual pattern of either finishing first or last is as confounding as the Giants' even-year success was. Of course, that came to an end last year, so what's the fate of Boston's curious pole-to-pole pattern in 2017?
Well, when you add Sale to a team that won 93 games last year, it looks like the worst-or-first streak will continue, with the latter massively more likely than the former.
If you tend to be a contrarian, there's another path you can take. You could say, "Subtract not a .3/.4/.5 player but a .3/.4/.6 player with the highest OPS in baseball last season from last year's lineup and watch the plunge begin." However, as incredible as Ortiz's (.315/.401/.620) farewell season with the Red Sox was, assuming the their offensive success depended on him completely misses the point of how good the lineup was from top to bottom.
Boston wasn't the highest-scoring team in baseball because Ortiz carried it, the Red Sox were the highest-scoring team because they got on base at a higher clip (.348) than any other team. Subtract Ortiz from that performance and Boston would have been second at .342, just behind the Cubs.
Moreland won't come close to replicating Ortiz, and Pablo Sandoval represents a huge question mark who still appears a poor fit for this environment (see the 2015 preview). But Boston's stars, this decade's Killer B's, (Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and perhaps this year Andrew Benintendi) are young and not necessarily subject to regression. Well, age-related regression. Health can be a different thing.
One of the best ways to find a rotation that won't duplicate its prior year's success is to find a team that had all five primary starters make more than 150 starts. Avoiding replacement-level performances is a huge benefit, even if the regulars aren't stars. Boston faces a similar wall to climb on offense. While the rest of the majors didn't even average three such players a team, the Red Sox had six different everyday players who made at least 600 plate appearances. We already know Ortiz won't be around this year, so if the other five bats succumb to some sort of need for time off, there will be a drop-off in team production, perhaps of a significant nature.
The 2017 rotation is stronger and it's why the Red Sox face short odds this season. Sale teams with David Price (health willing) and 2016 AL Cy Young Award winner Rick Porcello to form an enviable trio of arms. Porcello has been a favorite of the sabermetric set for years, but outside of a decent year in 2014 with Detroit, he never fulfilled that promise in his seven-year career prior to 2016. It's a near lock he'll allow materially more runs this year. Sale, however, can fill that gap, and then some, replacing the innings of the departed Buchholz (5.01 ERA).
The defense, perhaps due to the youth around the diamond, posted its first significantly above-average effort since 2012 when I started calculating adjusted defensive efficiency. "Above-average" also nicely sums up the bullpen's 2016 campaign, as it finished in a three-way tie for the eighth-lowest ERA in the majors. With the departures of veterans Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara there are changes, but last year they weren't particularly effective, collectively raising the rest of the bullpen's ERA. In any event, the unit is still anchored by Craig Kimbrel, whose streak of annually rising ERAs may sit at four, but it belies the fact that he struck out nearly 38 percent of the batters he faced and that the ERA streak started from a ridiculously low level (1.01 in 2012).
I wouldn't call the Red Sox's expected route to October easy, at least not as easy as the one I foresee for the team that vanquished them in the American League Division Series last season, the Cleveland Indians. But Boston has tremendous offensive firepower, and enough balance on the runs suppression side of the ledger to win the AL East, even if Price doesn't duplicate last year's 35-start effort. Still, the Red Sox are priced near perfection as Vegas hung a 92.5 wins total as their 2017 hurdle.
Due to the incredible health they had last year, the departure of Ortiz and the possible question mark around Price, I can see a bumpier road to 90 wins than consensus. This is an "under" pick for me, not because of the team outlook but because of the price.
2017 projection: 90-72 (first, AL East)
Bet recommendation: Under