Real baseball is finally being played, meaning Opening Day is on the way. With that in mind, we'll be profiling the key players from the Red Sox roster leading up to the first regular season game. The focus will be on what we think is an important attribute or question surrounding these players in terms of their potential 2012 success. First up, Ryan Sweeney.

Ryan Sweeney looks like a baseball player. In fact, he is 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds of baseball player, the kind of guy you expect to hit the ball very far when you see him in his uniform. When he was drafted by the White Sox in the second round of the 2003 amateur entry draft, Baseball America wrote about him as being a "pure hitter with gap power, in the mold of John Olerud." Olerud averaged 18 homers per 162 games in his career, and slugged .503 from age 24 through 29. Sweeney, on the other hand, has 14 homers in his major league career after 1,681 plate appearances, and has averaged just five long balls per 162 games played.

The swing and physique remain, but the story in his career to this point is that he's a tease. A look through snippets of old Baseball Prospectus comments (dated for the upcoming season) show you the timeline of frustration:

• 2007: Perhaps no player creates more dissension in the prospect community than Ryan Sweeney. Many scouts take one look at his picture-perfect swing, his Abercrombie & Fitch-catalog physique, and his tender age for his levels and insist that he`s a future stud. Statheads--and a silent minority of scouts--look at his statistical record and see a fourth outfielder.
• 2008: Though only 23, Sweeney is already seen as a disappointment for his failure to develop any kind of meaningful power. What thumping he did do last year was all done in hitter-friendly Charlotte, and following up that season with a punchless Arizona Fall League campaign only reinforced concern that he has little or no projection other than as a fourth outfielder.
• 2009: Sweeney just looks like he should be a star, and that is what has been so frustrating. He's tall, lean, strong, and athletic, has tools a-plenty, but the White Sox got understandably sick of waiting for his pretty swing to develop some power.
• 2010: Sweeney certainly looks the part of a slugging outfielder, a six-foot-four athlete with as pretty a swing as you'll find, but the power that was forecast to come from that swing has now generated 12 home runs in 948 big-league at-bats. He's an excellent defensive outfielder, but given his lack of power (and patience, too) plus his troubles hitting lefties, he's simply not enough of a hitter to play every day. He'd be an excellent fourth outfielder on a good team, but Oakland isn't that team yet.
• 2011: Sweeney has been a tease for years: no Oakland player looks better in a uniform, and no player on the team has a prettier swing, but now that he's gotten nearly 1,500 plate appearances, it's time to accept the fact that he can hit for average but has no secondary skills.

"Bad mechanics. Doesn't know himself as a hitter," he [Valentine] said. "He's hit some balls really far. He was the one early on who was hitting balls into the bullpen when we were warming up. Branch Rickey said, ‘If you see a guy hit a ball 500 feet that means he has major league power, it's up to the coaches to get him to perform at a major league level.'"