DocHolliday

This is what I hope from this year's team and the organization in general. Where that translates in the standings is a complete mystery at this point. If the team can be competitive on the field and get back to being a respected organization, I will feel a lot better about the future seasons and worry less about the final outcome of this particular season. Just go out and play hard each day, keep a positive attitude, and see what happens.

Should be available now, but I know it's only available on certain platforms.

Almost reminds me of 2011 and "The Best Team Ever" campaigning by the Herald, et al. As far as I'm concerned, the Giants are still the team to beat in the NL west and Oakland/Texas look to be tough on the Angels- even Seattle has improved. The Astros on the other hand, tonight's game aside, will inflate every other team's record in the AL West.

And the longest running thread on Talksox? http://http://www.talksox.com/forum/talk-sox-forum/16902-red-sox-2012-2013-offseason-thread.html

Louisville looks like the team to beat, even with Ware out. They completely shut down Duke for the better part of the game and should have similar results against Wichita State.

Not even one game in yet, but the Astros have played a good game through 5+. Their catcher Jason Castro has the looks and batting stance of Ryan Kalish - anybody else notice that?

Glad to see the Game Thread section active again. Tomorrow should be exciting and hopefully will be the first opportunity for a winning streak in 2013. Why not get started on the right foot for a change? Go Sox!

I wouldn't go as far to say that the last few ST games are must wins. But I will say that the attitude in those games has to be different than previous years. They can't treat it like a must win, but they need to treat it progressively more like a regular season game so that they have the right mindset as a team come April 1. It was especially evident in 2011 for me. I was at all 3 of the games in the opening series in Texas, and the Sox were an embarrassment. The Rangers were clearly ready for the season to start and the Sox, particularly the pitching, looked like they were going through the dead arm period in Spring Training. Lackey pitched the 2nd game and was absolutely rocked - 3.2 IP and 9 ER. Even with revisionist history that his elbow may have been bothering him at that time, the effort was clearly, for lack of a better word, lacking. Last season, there was the bullpen debacle with Aceves and Melancon in games 1 & 3 and the ridiculous 2nd game where Beckett gave up 5 HR in less than 5 innings. Even if they get through the first two weeks and are hovering around .500, that would be a step in the right direction on a lot of different fronts.

As a subscriber to MLB.tv for the past 10 seasons, I can say that April of each season is the worst month for quality and getting issues resolved. Its like clockwork and repeats itself each season. The main reasons for this are the new improvements MLB has each season for the product (which likely don't get proper testing before they are launched) and the fact that MLB promotes free trials for the first couple of weeks. Once May 1 hits, they've usually fixed a lot of the issues and the flood of users that come with the trial period either lose interest or aren't willing to pay for the service for the rest of the season. At that point, there are almost no issues for the rest of the season. If you have Directv, they offer the extra innings package for free during the first week of the season - so that would help out a bit to make sure you can watch the games for that first week, when the MLB.tv issues are at their worst.

They do have a lot to prove - especially in the first 2 weeks of the season. They've gotten off to some terrible starts the last 2 seasons that really set them back. This year, they begin the season with about 15 games against the AL East. Unlike the other 2 divisions, they won't have a divisional team to feast on throughout the season to boost their record. The AL East looks to be quite a competition, particularly with the Yankees injury situation this spring. From a marketing/business standpoint, they are spinning the lack of interest and lowered ticket sales by temporarily lowering concession prices as a "thank you" for the glory years of the past decade. A slow start on the field will quickly refresh the scrutiny and negative feelings/preconceptions that many in the fan base seem to have about the organization, but have largely kept dormant in the offseason. It's the time of the year where optimism springs eternal, but another slow start will bring back the negativity and scrutiny of the baseball and business operations. That being said, I feel and hope that this year will be a step in the right direction and a respectful record by Patriot's Day isn't out of the realm of possibility.

Been really busy with work the last couple of months. Glad to see the regular posters trickling back in and some new posters as well. Less than a week from Opening Day - can't wait to get the season started! Hope everyone is doing well and look forward to seeing everyone on the GTs and on the rest of the board.

I love your positive outlook on things, but I think that on paper, there are teams that are either agreed by the baseball world as better than the Sox or are debatably a better team. For me, the teams that are without question better than the Sox on paper are the Tigers and Angels. So while there are only 2 teams that are without question better on paper, there are a lot of teams that have a case but still have legitimate concerns. -Oakland (can they repeat last year's tremendous season?) -Texas (how will their pitching fair and how do they replace Hamilton?) -White Sox (will they get consistency from their staff and lineup?) -Blue Jays (can everybody stay healthy?) -Yankees (health concerns) -Rays (can they score enough runs?) I'm purposefully leaving out other teams that are close to entering the discussion like the Orioles and Royals because I don't think they have the same core of talent and will have to have extraordinary things go in their favor like Baltimore's record in close games and extra inning games.

I'd be pretty ecstatic if they got off to that kind of start in April. Looking back at the past 10 years, they've always faced a group of teams in the first 14 games of the season that, as a group, has a collective winning % of around .500. So, the majority of those seasons, they were able to get off to a fast start simply because they had a more talented team than the group they were facing. The exceptions of course were the past 3 seasons. The only season where they had a winning percentage lower than the group of teams they faced was, of course, last season. Like you mentioned, they'll start this season with four series against division rivals. One of the big things that's been talked about this offseason is how their lineup should be ferocious against LH pitching. They will get to face quite a few LH starters through those first 4 series. NY has Sabathia and Pettitte. Toronto has Romero and Buerhle. Tampa has Price and Moore. Baltimore has Chen and Matusz. That's 8 LH starters, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Sox had to face at least 5 of those guys through the first 4 series. To me, they should be able to salvage some games there - even if the matchups are tough. They've been pretty terrible in a lot of areas recently. But one area they will have to improve on in 2013 if they want to have a chance at contending is better results against their division. This year's division will be tough and doesn't have a clear favorite at this point. If they can go 7-7 or 6-8 through the first week or so, I would see that as a building block going forward.

I don't want to put an ultimatum on anything, but I feel a lot of things this year will depend on how the team begins the season - particularly in the first couple of weeks of the season. If you look at the Sox record through the first 14 of games of the season, which is roughly 10% of the season, here's where they've stood the past 3 seasons: 2010: 5-9 2011: 4-10 2012: 4-10 Compare that to the season average from 2003 - 2009 of 9-5 (worst start being 8-6). Its not so much a matter of statistical significance but more so of mindset and morale. The organization can say all they want about it being a long season, etc, but the fact is the slow starts have had an ill effect on the final outcome in each of the past 3 seasons. Getting off to a fast start this year would go a long way to making a positive influence on the organization from a number of fronts: instilling some level of credibility and confidence of the real owners of the team - the fanbase, deflecting negative criticism of the organization from sources like the media, the Francona book, etc, and, perhaps most importantly, giving the players a sense of unity and confidence that they in fact CAN get back to playing winning baseball.

If 2013 turns out to be a repeat of 09, I think the majority of posters and fans of the Sox would be ecstatic. Making the playoffs in and of itself in 2013 would likely be above what many of us see as the ceiling for this year's current squad. As for the downward trend, it makes sense to me that it would take a couple of years to show up. Like I mentioned in a previous post, the 08 team - and to an extent the 09 team as well, still had significant holdovers from the 07 team. You see the decline and inconsistency of significant players from the 07 team (Beckett, Lowell, DiceK, Varitek, Wakefield, etc.) along with the departure of key pieces of the 07 team (Schilling, Manny) and the growing pains of young players (Ellsbury, Buchholz). It all contributed to the decline from 07/08 to 09. You can also make the case that the player development machine did not produce enough impact players to help make up for the lost contributions from 07-09. Keeping in mind that impact talent from the draft usually does not arrive to the majors until atleast 2-3 years after the draft year, here's a look at the impact/potential impact players drafted under Theo through 2009: 2003: David Murphy, Jonathan Papelbon 2004: Dustin Pedroia 2005: Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz (they also drafted Lowrie and Craig Hansen) 2006: Daniel Bard, Justin Masterson, Ryan Kalish 2007: Will Middlebrooks, Anthony Rizzo 2008: Casey Kelly (also drafted Ryan Lavarnway and Ryan Westmoreland) 2009: Reymond Fuentes Its pretty clear to me that the overall level of talent coming through the development system dropped off significantly after 2007 - around the time the Sox have gone on the record about a change in draft philosophy. Several of these guys could have been potential impact core pieces going into this season (Kelly and Rizzo) - but we all know that the majority of us, including myself, were on board when they were traded away. But it can work the other way too. Since the Sox have gone back to a refined version of their original draft strategy, they appear to have assembled a significant pool of potential impact talent: 2010: Garin Cecchini, Bryce Brentz, Anthony Ranaudo 2011: Matt Barnes, Blake Swihart, Henry Owens, Jackie Bradley 2012: Deven Marrero, Brian Johnson, Pat Light This year's draft is also shaping up to be promising for the future - when you consider the Sox were able to keep all of their unprotected draft picks, in addition to their protected #7 overall pick in the draft. Going forward, I'd like to see them be more hesitant to trade top prospects and more focused on integrating talent from the minor leagues onto the major league roster.