First, you suggest the team was missing a “spark”. I absolutely hate talk like that. Baseball is not a fast paced game. It’s one that allows ample “cool down” time between each pitch, at bat, and game, and not one that’s subject to sparks. Sure, a guy can get on a hot streak because of any number of reasons, but I deny the idea that some sort of weird team chemistry BS can produce real results across a whole team.

Second, you seem to be grossly mismanaging the timeline here. Matsuzaka was never a factor during the good part of the season, and Beckett’s homer issues came after the division lead had been given up. The reason they lost the lead was because of a miserable July where they lost the production of Jason Bay and just didn’t have the balls fall in very often. IIRC, Petey was slumping then too, and that was when Tek’s offense took a nosedive into oblivion.

I also take issue with the idea that 3 games in the playoffs can be used to somehow diagnose a team’s problems. Our issue was that we couldn’t hit them. Didn’t happen until the 3rd game, and then our closer who had spent the last 2-3 months dominating the league shat the bed. It happens. It was 3 games at the end of a season where we had won 95 games. The rotation did just fine, too (why would it be surprising that Lester was good, by the way? He’s been our ace for the last 2 years now…), allowing 9 earned runs in 17.2 innings. Not fantastic, but certainly not “poor”. We lost because we had a 2-game hitting slump of epic proportions. It happens.

I don’t understand what you’re talking about with pitching. What does Lowe have to do with anything? How has Buchholz NOT established himself as a legitimate rotation arm? Wakefield is expected back, as is Daisuke. While there’s definitely need of a 6th man to back up Wakefield/provide a replacement in case of injury, overpaying for Lackey in a year where he’s the only Marquee name is a bad idea. Better to grab Sheets/Duch/Harden/Bedard on a mid-level 1-year contract.

The Sox do have some offensive issues. Lowell can’t be counted on to produce at a high level offensively or defensively, and quite frankly Martinez is not a 100% solution at catcher, given the fact that plenty of scouts agree he can’t play the position consistently and maintain his offense—though even an offensively weak Martinez is better than Tek, we should definitely get a capable backup. Doing so would help us in the 3B-1B dilemma if we could have V-Mart play maybe 7/10 games at catcher, 3 at 1st, etc. Also, DH is still potentially a big problem. I have no faith Ortiz will put up a good line next year.

I agree that Lowrie needs to get another shot while fully healthy, but we need another guy to make sure we’ve got options. JJ Hardy is my pick.

As for the sense of purgatory, I can’t disagree more. Lester has emerged as an ace, Buchholz is making a strong push to be our #3. We’ve seen the addition of Dustin Pedroia and the growth of Kevin Youkilis into an offensive force, and we’ve made big-name deals at the last 2 trade deadlines. If the team looks like it’s hit purgatory in the last couple years, it might be because of how some of our new guys have fallen somewhat flat—Lowrie hasn’t stepped up yet, Ellsbury wasn’t able to maintain his ridiculous 2007 pace and is actually fairly questionable in center due to all the late reads, and while Buck has done better this past year, it seems somehow delayed to some people given how he came out with a bang in ‘07. And pen arms like MDC and RamRam have seen tons of trouble. Plus our FA additions last year proved beyond unimpressive But if people expect us to turn our whole team over every year, well, that’s just plain impossible.