people forget that at one point with ellsbury, pedroia, v-mart, buchholz, beckett, matsuzaka, varitek and lowell all on the disabled list all at the same time, we somehow managed to pull within 0.5 a game of the yankees and have the second best record in baseball. i would say that we were competitive with the yankees and rays then without much of anything going our way for most of the year
we were a very good team before all the injuries but when we started relying on 6th outfielders and 7th starters for months at a time, many of those guys who were hurt never returned and youkilis went on the disabled list as well, we couldn't keep it up any more