Ya, I don't wanna be a downer, but then I looked at the thread title: "A Realistic Look at 2026"...
It's great the starting rotation looks deep, but I always feel a team is defined by position players, the regulars who play every night and not just once a week.
Argue all you want about pitching, then again the Sox starters may not be better than even Texas: deGrom, Eovaldi, Gore, Leiter, Junis.
I really like Ranger Suarez; he reminds me of Luis Tiant coming off the '75 World Series. And that team with so much promise went into 1976 with a rotation of Looie, two other All-Star pitchers in Wise and Lee, and a winter acquisition headed to Cooperstown: Fergie Jenkins.
The '26 Sox have a handful of pretty good guys on the field and in the batting order, but no stars. That '76 Boston club had Hall of Famers like Yaz, Rice and Fisk, plus MVP Lynn, Dwight Evans and Cecil Cooper (Most Similar Batter on bb-ref: Don Mattingly). They won 83 games.