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In the words of Trevor Story a "Sick Offense)


Here's my take on the upcoming season: While fans were grumbling all offseason about the moves the Sox didn't make, the most important thing to me is the players the Sox will have back AND who they WON'T have back. Marwin Gonzalez, Franchy Cordero, Danny Santana, and Michael Chavis combined for the following line:

PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB* SB-CS TB BA OBP/SLG/OPS

616 564 64 110 26 2 10 49 48 9-6 169 .195 .256/.300/.556

In addition, Story is basically taking Renfroe's place in the line-up - the power should be about the same but the OBP will likely be a good deal higher. A lot depends on whether JBJ bounces back to where he was when a member of the Sox, but I am more inclined to trust the 2500 plate appearances he had between 2016 and 2020 than the 428 he had with the Brewers. They have also done subtraction by addition with the bullpen, as Peacock, Perez, Richards, Brewer, Weber, Brice, Workman, Andriese, and Ottavino combined for 183.0 innings with a 5.46 ERA and Peacock, Richards, and Perez pitched 212.2 innings with a 5.16 ERA. We did also lose Rodriguez out of the rotation, but the people who have come in (combined with more innings from Houck, Hill, Whitlock, Robles, Brasier et al) should leave us in a better position. Again, one has to decide whether Matt Barnes is the pitcher who threw 4.1 AWFUL innings in August OR whether we should trust the almost 400 innings he has thrown in his career. I did a rough estimate using the averages for each RS player over several years, and at a guess the Sox should score between 850-900 runs - not including any contributions we might get from Triston Casas and Jarren Duran. I think we are in a lot better shape than people think. I could be wrong - wouldn't be the first time - but I am looking forward to the Red Sox having one of the top offenses in the majors and more pitching than people think they were.