Team Identities: Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox are right in the mix for the AL East title again and with two world championships in the past four years its pretty safe to say they will be contenders again. The question for this years Red Sox though will be do they stand pat at the deadline or make a move to upgrade.

Lately the Red Sox’s have seemed to push all the right buttons and the majority of the credit has to go to Theo Epstein. Epstein who was named the best GM in baseball by Jon Heyman has taken advantage of being the GM of a large market team and not only going after the big free agents, but using the teams resources in player development as well. The team saw some of the benefits of this last year, as they got huge contributions from several home grown player who were signed under Epstein’s watch. With the second ranked farm system in Baseball Americas rankings they have a strong foundation to stay at the top for a while.

While the team is almost the same as last years World Champion team it would be wise to make a few upgrades at the deadline. While the team might have one of the best records now, its not smart to stand still while everyone else around you is getting better. Julio Lugo has only seven extra base hits, no home runs and more errors than anyone in baseball. Jed Lowrie is a posible in house upgrade and has already played a few games at short for the Red Sox. Lowrie isn’t going to be a super star anytime soon but it won’t take much to be a upgrade over Lugo at this point. Coco Crisp is a guy who still holds some trade value and is only holding the development of Jacob Ellsbury down.

The rotation is pretty deep with Josh Beckett and Daisuke Matsuzaka at the top. Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz are both promising young developing pitchers and solid members of the rotation. Tim Wakefield is Tim Wakefield, he will give you some good and some bad outings but more importantly is a solid innings eater. Bartolo Colon will be interesting to see if he can build up any value for a possible trade latter in the season. Curt Shilling also will be back some time this season and may be able to get a few quality starts in. The bullpen is strong as well with Jonathan Papelbon as the closer and Hideki Okajima as the setup man. The rest of the bullpen though is a little questionable. Justin Masterson could be a interesting piece for the bullpen later in the season.

The biggest questions facing the Red Sox’s though likely won’t come until after the season though. Manny Ramirez has a $20 million option that needs to be addressed and Jason Varitek the teams captain will be a free agent. With David Ortiz starting to slow in his production and Manny Ramirez not getting any younger going after Mark Teixeira wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. If that were to happen though they would likely have to decline Ramirez’s option and move Kevin Youkilis to left. The upside of this move is that for about the same money they get a younger powerful clean up hitter and probably a defensive upgrade at both positions. It will be interesting to see if the Red Sox show any interest in a big time starter this offseason. While it likely isn’t a must need for them, if a CC Sabathia or AJ Burnett are available and can be signed to a moderate length deal it would a huge plus for a already stacked rotation.

The Red Sox are being looked at by some as the model franchise in baseball. While they do have some key pieces that are getting older, I don’t see them slipping to far anytime soon. As long as they continue to use their big market resources and use them wisely, they will be a contender for quite a while.