FanPost Friday : Favorite All-Time Red Sox

As this article is written, the Red Sox are only five games above .500, which is a bit of a let down when you consider the amount of times they won just a season ago, with a roster that is essentially the same, minus a few key relievers. If the poor record (relatively speaking) wasn’t enough, they find themselves 17 games back of first place, pretty much dashing their hopes of winning the division. The Red Sox aren’t out of the wild card race, but they find themselves in an unenviable position, 7.5 games back of the second wild card, and needing to leapfrog two very good teams to get back in (the Athletics and Rays).

For all intents and purposes, while they are not mathematically eliminated, it feels safe to assume this is not their season, and that they are done.

We won’t focus on the off-season until that comes, so it leaves us in an awkward area for FanPost Friday, where in-season happenings just don’t feel like they matter, and where off-season happenings are too far away to talk about in detail.

So instead, let’s focus on everyone’s favorite topic - players of yesteryear that we loved.

The rules for this exercise are simple. You are filling out a 25 man roster. How you choose to fill that roster is entirely up to you. You can make them the best players, or you can make them your cult favorites. Because it would be boring to have the exact same roster from everyone, I advise thinking about what would make a team special to you.

Your roster must be a legal roster. As fun as it would be to have 25 Pedro Martinez seasons on your roster, you need some offense, and you could not possibly have more than one Pedro Martinez. One player, one season, period. You can mix and match players from other seasons (like 2000 Pedro Martinez and 2018 Mookie Betts), but you cannot mix and match the same player from different seasons (no 1999 Pedro and 2000 Pedro).

Write a story! Tell me why you think the team you assembled of the historic Red Sox would be able to make up this 17 game gap, and dominate their way to a World Series.

Have fun!