It is time to plan for next year

We are starting to move beyond the "it is early" excuse for the Red Sox record. The club has issues and it may be too late to resolve them. Even the most optimist projection of the Olde Towne Team's chance of making the postseason is only at twenty percent. The Red Sox should be planning to sell off pieces this summer.

Nick Cafardo said in a recent piece for the Boston Globe.

Being the GM in Boston means:...2. Don’t ever think of retooling. You can’t give up the season and make the necessary deals with veteran players to replenish your farm system. Uh-uh, don’t dare do that in Boston;...

Yawkey Way will need to forget the public pressure to play for today. If this is truly not your "Father's Red Sox", then we may see the best example of it this July.

If the Red Sox standings demonstrate an unrealistic mountain to climb after the All-Star Break, a large segment of fans may not revolt to the white flag waving.

History tells us that the cards are stacked against a Red October

Last week, I wrote a realistic but pessimist outlook for the Red Sox. Essentially, my point was that the Rays and Yankees are too good with too big of a lead for the Red Sox to have a better than 50/50 chance to over take either club and make the playoffs.

The A.L. East mountain is too high to climb

Even though the Red Sox have won seven out of their last ten, they have not been playing good baseball. In those same ten games against mostly non-playoff contenders, the Olde Towne Team's run differential is +3 (53 runs scored and 50 runs against). They should have won about half of those games. The Red Sox great record in one-run games is responsible for the six of the seven wins. It is unlikely that this trend will continue. They need to play much better baseball or we could be witnessing the first year in John Henry's tenure where the Red Sox will be sellers on July 31, 2010.

4/19 Online Seats Game Thread: Patriot’s Day Turnaround

On the holiest (and most proprietary) of all state-wide holidays, the Boston Red Sox will try to turn it around against the Rays, who have taken the first three of the series. With the Marathon in the rear view, John Lackey looks to lead the Sox past their slump.

4/18 Online Seats Game Thread: Rays Nab Two After Rain

Within a matter of hours, the Boston Red Sox had dropped two to the Rays. Jon Lester must shake off his early season rust to avoid dropping three games to Tampa Bay within 18 hours.

Money in the margins

What is the first thing a server asks you when sit down at a table? “What can I get you to drink?” Why is the desert menu usually separate from the rest of the menu? Because flour, sugar, syrup and water are cheap and not labor intensive. The profit on that steak may be 40 to 50 percent after labor is included in its preparation but the soda you have been chugging down in the mean time nets a 98 percent gain.

Where Theo Epstein truly makes his money is with the players on the margins, the soda and German chocolate cakes players who propel an 81 win team to a 96 win team.

4/17 Online Seats Game Thread: Rain Shortens Hit Parade

The Boston Red Sox will finish what they started last night against the Rays, while a new game begins at 7:10, pitting Clay Buchholz against James Shields in game two of the series.

4/16 Online Seats Game Thread: Running to Home

The Boston Red Sox will return home to face Tampa Bay, and Josh Beckett tries to set the pace against the red hot Rays.

Is Tampa Bay pitching overrated?

While Tampa Bay has had plenty of named talent over the last few years from Scott Kazmir, James Shields, Matt Garza and then David Price came along. This along with a top offense and elite talent has led to their recent success in the AL East. Perhaps overvalued is a bit harsh, but they have several pitching changes and again compared to their peers in the division have some flaws. Departing this year will be the presence of Kazmir at the top of the rotation, but that shouldn't be a bad thing. His walk rate was always high and with the drop in velocity it's likely the drop in strikeouts is going to stick around. He is surely not the ace of seasons before. That leaves James Shields as the team ace and that is a good start. He was the ninth most valuable pitcher in the AL last year based on pitching runs above replacement. There were some cracks in his season though as his walk rate climbed, but not an extreme amount and should regress in 2010.

Evan Brunell’s 2010 MLB Predictions: Does Boston win it?

As the advent of spring training games are upon us, I thought I'd kick off everyone's favorite little exercise by providing my own personal predictions as to how I think the season will shake out. Now, before I do so, a word of caution: predictions can change daily based on events. Heck, my predictions change multiple times a week. But I've gotta make predictions at some point, right? Point being, I might disagree with my own predictions a week from now. Most of the time, these kind of predictions are an exercise in fallacy, but it's not going to stop me from trying. I don't know why I made things harder on myself, but I set out to present an exact record. This means I had to go into a spreadsheet and make sure all the wins and losses totaled the correct amount of games while also balancing out to a .500 record. Took me a while, but dadgum it, I did it. One thing I did not control for was the unbalanced schedule (in a total record sense), but I already strained my tenuous math skills, so I wasn't about to complicate it further. Click "read more" or the headline to find my predictions.