Looking back on Sunday’s lineup we may long for that day these next few weeks. The roster was:
Marco Scutaro
Daniel Nava
David Ortiz
Kevin Youkilis
Victor Martinez
J.D. Drew
Bill Hall
Darnell McDonald
Jon Lester
That lineup still held five of our expected starters. Getting back to the AL we will have Adrian Beltre back in that lineup, but with Martinez hitting the DL we are starting to see a lineup half full of replacement level players. Now it looks like Eric Patterson will be getting some time at second as well as Bill Hall, but neither has produced even one WAR in the past three seasons.
Then the constant outfield questions with McDonald and Nava filling in, we have seen solid production, but McDonald is the definition of a replacement level player and Nava has played quite a bit over his head. If we look at catcher we can we reassured that we probably have the best backup catcher we could hope for right now, but we are still seeing a big step back.
Looking at the players we lost in Dustin Pedroia, Victor Martinez, Jacoby Ellsbury and Mike Cameron we had an estimated 17 WAR expected in a full season from them. With this lineup we will be costing ourselves almost a win per week of full games heading to the All-Star break. This is obviously based on averages and luck could help them win every game or make them lose more, but on average this fill in lineup could start to hamper this lineup quickly.
The losses of Ellsbury and Cameron have not been as large an effect as the loss of Pedroia or Martinez will be. They are average players and the loss to replacement from them is not as large and takes longer to see how much it is affecting your season. On the other hand Pedroia and Martinez are 5+ WAR players and replacing them with even average players can really hurt you.
A strong showing against the Rays could ease the pressure on this group, but getting swept could easily lead to a bad lead up to the break. There still is no reason to panic, but if Ellsbury is not ready to go when the Sox come back it might be time look to left field as a position to add help. Adding a proven MLB bat in left field could ease the pressure on the rest of the offense and perhaps allow Ellsbury to return in a super bench role to fill holes in the outfield and steal needed bases while he comes back from the injury.