The Sox won 78 games last year while getting 7 IP from Sale and Paxton. They probably need to improve by 8 games minimum to make the postseason.
They’ve lost Bogaerts and JD as well. The current in-house replacements of Yoshida and Hosmer/Dalbec are not going to fill that void. I expect Yoshida will get back some. I have no faith in the others.
The bullpen should be greatly improved, which is nice. Probably not “8 more wins” nice. But it’s a step.
But as of right now, the biggest thing working for the Sox is it’s still only mid-December. While predicting the next moves has shown to be impossible, that does mean improvement is.
We really have no choice but to see how these next two months play out…