Kuzul

For lack of a better word, the Boston Red Sox’s offseason has been quiet. Scratch that, it has been dead silent. For a team that was so aggressive in 2011, yet so disappointing in September, Red Sox Nation has been waiting for something big.

The Mark Melancon trade was nice, and the Nick Punto signing adds depth, but those moves are tiny chisels in the rock. It is time Ben Cherington pulled out the jackhammer and went to town.

The Boston Red Sox have been inquiring on starting pitchers, specifically Goo Gonzalez. They also looked into Oakland Athletics closer Andrew Bailey but balked at the asking price of top prospect Will Middlebrooks. As they should have.

I do not think it is a secret that Kevin Youkilis is not the long-term solution at third base. Youkilis, or “Youk” as dubbed by fans, made the move to the hot corner in 2011 after Boston acquired Adrian Gonzalez. The 32-year-old has been a visage of consistency for Boston, posting nearly identical slash lines from 2008-2010 (all equating to an OPS above .955). He is also known for his black-hole glove.

But 2011 was not kind to Kevin Youkilis. Injuries have always been a problem, and moving to a more active position like third seemed to be too much. In 2011, Youk hit .258/.373/.459, hitting a mere 17 home runs (two less than 2010 despite playing in 18 more games). His defense also seemed to hit a wall.

The failed transition was an eye-opener for Boston fans. Will Middlebrooks is now looked at in a new light. The 23-year-old prospect combined for a .285/.328/.506 line between AA and AAA last season, slugging 23 home runs. All things considered, he currently stands as the Boston Red Sox’s next third baseman, making Youkilis expendable.

Middlebrooks’ breakout campaign has not gone unnoticed, and teams are interested. But it would be a big gamble for the Boston Red Sox to relinquish a top prospect that can fill a huge void.

Enter Chase Headley.

Chase Headley is currently the third baseman of the San Diego Padres. Drafted in the second round of the 2005 draft, Headley was in the minors for only three years before he received his first cup of coffee with the Padres in 2007 as a 23-year-old.

Headley, now 27, has shown a great propensity for hitting. His baseball acumen has transformed into stellar patience at the plate. Despite a poor showing with the glove in 2011, Headley has good instincts on defense and posted a stellar 16.5 UZR in 2010 (the best by any third baseman that year). The switch-hitter finally came into his own last season, putting together a career best .289/.374/.399 line in an injury-shortened 113 games.

However, like all San Diego Padres hitters, we need to read between the lines.

It is well known that Petco Park is the best pitchers park in baseball—just talk to Adrian Gonzalez. Its effects have certainly been felt on Chase Headley. In his career, he is hitting .229/.319/.336 at Petco, versus .303/.364/.441 away. In 2011, Headley posted an .864 OPS away, .190 points higher than his .674 OPS at home.

If traded to Boston, I do not think Headley would have as successful a move as A-Goon. Their power is not on the same level, and Gonzalez is a more complete player. However, there is no reason to think Headley could not hit .300, get on base at a .400 clip and hit 15-20 home runs. Sounds a lot like Kevin Youkilis numbers, huh?

This biggest thing standing in the way is the asking price. Word on the street is that the Padres are asking for a lot, but as things stand, the biggest suitor so far has been the Detroit Tigers. Boston’s farm runs much deeper, and that gives them a leg up.

San Diego could use help in the corner outfield spots, which makes Josh Reddick the centerpiece of any deal. Boston could also add one of Anthony Ranaudo or Matt Barnes. It seems like Boston is giving up a lot, but this deal adds a lot of flexibility to the team.

With Chase Headley in position to take over third, suddenly both Kevin Youkilis and Will Middlebrooks become expendable. Youk has long been an OBP holy grail to Billy Beane. Boston could easily package a deal around Youkilis and Middlebrooks (and some fringe prospects) for Gio Gonzalez and Andrew Bailey. Or, they could get a third team involved for Youk and forward the prospects of that deal to Oakland.

In just two easy steps, the Boston Red Sox gain a 27-year-old switch-hitting third baseman of the future, a 25-year-old workhorse with ace potential and a solid 27-year-old closer. Suddenly, the team is reinvigorated with youth and one of the best cores in baseball. Even better is that it is all incredibly plausible.

Someone get Ben Cherington on the phone.

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Now that the drama involving a new manager has been solved for the Red Sox, General Manager Ben Cherington still has a lot of work to do.

While busy interviewing managerial candidates, the Red Sox witnessed their star closer, Jonathan Papelbon, skip town and sign with the Philadelphia Phillies.

It seemed as though during the press conference announcing Bobby Valentine as their new manager, another closing candidate was swept out from under them as Heath Bell signed a three year deal with the Miami Marlins.

To this point the Sox remain a fragmented team. They are only a few minor moves away from being ready to take the field in 2012. Here are five realistic offseason moves they should consider.

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Heard This Blog ranked the top five Jewish current baseball players

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Although the Red Sox began the 2011 season with an embarrassing three-game sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers, the Sox still have plenty of time to validate the media’s enormous expectations and secure a playoff spot.

However, in order to emerge victorious from a competitive American League East, the Sox must step back from the spotlight and focus on winning each individual game.

With a healthy and rejuvenated group of veterans, two superstar free agents acquisitions in Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, and a newly bolstered bullpen, the Sox are loaded with talent and can compete with any team in the league.

Nonetheless, it remains to be seen if the Sox can combine their enormous talent with the camaraderie and focus it takes to win the division. 

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When it comes to his lineup, Boston Red Sox Manager Terry Francona has a lot of difficult decisions to make. He was handed some of the best puzzle pieces around and was told to “Tetris” them together to the best of his ability.

Francona better invest in those extra big pencil erasers that you used to buy in elementary school. You know, the ones that fit onto the end of the writing utensil over the small eraser that’s already attached to the pencil. I think Tito will be going through quite a few of those.

Not only will he spend this Spring Training figuring out the Red Sox best lineup, but he must also figure out secondary lineups for certain pitchers (lefties or righties) and certain ballparks. In addition he will need to run scenarios in his head to see what he would switch around if, say Jacoby Ellsbury gets in a slump or Youkilis were to become injured. What would his back-up lineups look like?

What if they would need to call some players up? Who would be the most likely minor leaguer to make the trip to Fenway and where would they best be suited in this batting order? There is a lot on Tito’s plate right now, but I don’t think he would want it any other way.

It’s my job to figure out the best way for Francona to set the 2011 Boston Red Sox starting lineup and your job to tell me where I went wrong or right (I’ll always take positive reinforcement) in the comment section.

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1. Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay Rays

2. David Wright, New York Mets

3. Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees

4. Ryan Zimmerman, Washington Nationals

5. Kevin Youkilis, Boston Red Sox

6. Adrian Beltre, Texas Rangers

7. Jose Bautista*, Toronto Blue Jays

8. Pedro Alvarez, Pittsburgh Pirates

9. Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants

10. Casey McGehee, Milwaukee Brewers

11. Martin Prado*, Atlanta Braves

12. Michael Young, Texas Rangers

13.Aramis Ramirez, Chicago Cubs

14. Chase Headley, San Diego Padres

15. Mark Reynolds, Baltimore Orioles

16. Ian Stewart, Colorado Rockies

17. Miguel Tejada*, San Francisco Giants

18. Michael Cuddyer*, Minnesota Twins

19. Johnny Peralta*, Detroit Tigers

20. Chris Johnson, Houston Astros

*Not their normal position but still eligible for 3B.

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As the title suggests, there’s rampant optimism among Red Sox fans after this winter’s acquisitions. The club traded for Adrian Gonzalez, a highly-prized first baseman whom the Boston brain trust has coveted for years. That grab was followed by the signing of Carl Crawford, the former Tampa left fielder who was the top free agent available this offseason.

The team then made some other changes, bringing in Bobby Jenks and Dan Wheeler to shore up an ailing bullpen, moving Kevin Youkilis back to third base after Adrian Beltre signed with Texas, and inking a diverse supporting cast of role players.

Adding two big bats to an already productive lineup got fans excited and competitors scrambling to devise ways to combat an offense that could be historically great. It’s true that these Sox need to prove themselves on the field before we can crown them division champs (or better), but the enthusiasm is justified.

Let’s quantify just how good this offense might be.

In doing so, it’s important to remember that offensive production doesn’t necessarily equate to wins. You could have the best lineup in history and still struggle if adequate pitching isn’t in place. But this year’s Sox have an improved bullpen and a serviceable rotation. In fact, if John Lackey and Josh Beckett can rebound from last year’s poor numbers, the starting five might be among the better rotations in baseball.

So if we take it as a given that the pitching can hang in there and keep the team in games, how good might the offense be, and what might that mean for the win column?

To figure it out, I took a look at the franchise’s historical data, specifically team OPS. OPS, which is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, is one of the better metrics at providing a snapshot of how good a player or team is (or was) at the plate.

Going all the way back to 1901, the franchise has a correlation of 0.92 between team OPS and runs scored. A value of 1.00 would have been perfectly positive, indicating that higher OPS always equates more runs scored, so a value of 0.92 is very strong. In simple terms, it’s been statistically true that the better the team does in one of those categories, the better they do in the other.

This doesn’t mean that an increase in OPS causes an increase in runs (or the other way around), but it doesn’t mean that two are connected.  So if we want to figure out how the 2011 offense might produce, we can draw some reasonable conclusions based on the OPS numbers its likely to put up.

Taking a look at the recent and career stats for each player likely to make a significant contribution, I came up with some ballpark expectations of what we might see.  

These are crude predictions; I can’t really estimate what effect the team chemistry might have, or what advantages the better players might enjoy as a result of having more big bats in the lineup. It’s also hard to determine how adjusting to Fenway will impact the newcomers. And there will almost certainly be a handful of other guys playing in a handful of games whose numbers will also factor in.

But on the whole, these are pretty defensible.

I also made some assumptions about playing time, guessing that Lowrie and Scutaro will share time at short, that Cameron and Kalish will rotate in the outfield taking some time away from Drew and Ellsbury, and that Ortiz will have some days off periodically.  In short, I applied percentages to make these 13 guys add up to nine full-time players.

The result is an estimated team OPS of .836.

So what does that mean?

These calculations assume that everyone does more or less what he’s been doing recently. At that “average” pace, the team’s OPS of .836 would be the third best in Red Sox history.

In 2003, the Sox posted an OPS of .851 while scoring 961 runs, and back in 1950 they finished with .848.  The 1950 also featured a team record 1,027 runs.

Are you starting to see what all the excitement is about?

If doing the expected could net that kind of output, what might happen if even one guy breaks out? What might happen if Big Papi repeats his .899 from last year? The 2011 season is, after all, a contract year for him. What if Gonzalez proves that Petco Park and the weak-hitting Padres were holding back and breaks the 1.000 mark? Or if Youk improves? Or if Lowrie plays well enough in the field to keep Scoots on the bench?

Just a two percent increase from these estimates would be a new all-time mark for the 110-year-old club.

All kinds of good things can happen that would make this team even better than I’m suggesting, and that, as Bostonians might say, is a wicked good thought. 1,000-plus runs is within reach, and if a few things break the team’s way, we could very well witness the best offense in Red Sox history.

And that would almost certainly lead to a playoff berth, a deep postseason run, and possibly more.

So fire up the DVR. Take some extra time off work. And plan on staying up for the West Coast games. Because it’s not too hard to imagine that 2011 might just be a record-breaking year.

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Adrian Gonzalez is the new big name in town, Carl Crawford is the high-profile free agent signing and Jon Lester is an early Cy Young favorite. Not one of these players is the key to Boston’s success next season.

No, that honor belongs to Kevin Youkilis, the big, burly right-handed slugger who enters his eighth professional season with the Red Sox. See what the Red Sox will be counting on him for in 2011 and what might happen if he doesn’t deliver.

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Our 2011 fantasy baseball projections will be released one-by-one until the top 100 players have been revealed. These rankings consider past achievements, current performance and expected future results based on standard 5×5 H2H settings.

Kevin Youkilis’ current ADP on Mock Draft Central is 30.89, nearly 11 spots below where we believe he belongs.

The thing fantasy managers may be forgetting is that Youkilis will re-gain third base eligibility this season, which is a huge deal considering the lack of depth at the hot corner.

A few things to consider: Youkilis has a better three-year batting average than David Wright, Evan Longoria, Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Zimmerman.

In fact, his three-year averages across the board top that of the favored Zimmerman, despite the fact that Youkilis has missed a total of 103 games over the last three seasons.

Still not convinced?

Youkilis has increased his OPS every season of his career:

• 2004: .780
• 2005: .805
• 2006: .810
• 2007: .843
• 2008: .958 (12th best in MLB)
• 2009: .961 (fifth best in MLB)
• 2010: .975 (seventh best in MLB)

At 32, Youkilis’ plate discipline remains stellar, as he posted well above-average ratios in 2010:

• BB/K ratio (0.87, MLB average: 0.46)
• Contact rate (87.0 percent, MLB average: 80.7 percent)
• Swinging strike rate (4.9 percent, MLB average: 8.5 percent)

Given 550 to 600 plate appearances in 2011, Boston’s No. 5 hitter (sandwiched between Adrian Gonzalez and David Ortiz) is poised to post the fourth-best line among third basemen.  

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: FANTASY BASEBALL INSIDERS

Check out the Home Run Heroics Forum to discuss the hottest baseball topics, including the upcoming 2011 fantasy baseball season!

Fantasy Baseball Insiders’ 2011 Big Board:

• Nos. 1-10: Is Pujols Still The Top Pick?
• No. 11: Joey Votto
• No. 12: Robinson Cano
• No. 13: Ryan Howard
• No. 14: Alex Rodriguez
• No. 15: Prince Fielder
• No. 16: Matt Holliday
• No. 17: Mark Teixeira
• No. 18: Matt Kemp
• No. 19: Roy Halladay

MLB Trades: Fantasy Impact:

• Frank Francisco Traded to the Blue Jays, Who Will Be The Team’s Closer?
• Mike Napoli Traded to the Texas Rangers: Fantasy Impact
• Vernon Wells Traded to the Los Angeles Angels: Fantasy Impact
• Adrian Beltre Traded to the Texas Rangers: Fantasy Impact

Previous articles from Fantasy Baseball Insiders:

• The Sub-2.50 ERA Curse: Why Five Elite Starting Pitchers May Regress in 2011
• 2010 Batting Average on Balls in Play Leaders: What to Expect in 2011?
• 2011 Closer’s Corner: Papelbon, Cordero & Rivera Are the Only Reliable Options

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As we fast approach the start of another baseball season, let’s return to a familiar question: Who’s better, the Yankees or the Red Sox? 

The Red Sox made more upgrades to their roster during the offseason, but the Yankees were the better team last year.  So where does that leave us?  Let’s take a look, position by position.

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