The pitching and defense are fantastic. I admire Theo's strategy in turning one of the worst defensive teams in the MLB to easily one of the best with gold glove fielding and one of the better starting rotations in baseball. You got gold glovers in Beltre, Youk, and Pedroia patrolling the infield (with an above average defender in Scutaro) and Ellsbury (+21 UZR in left field), 3x Gold Glover Mike Cameron patrolling center, and J.D. Drew who covers a lot of ground in right. The whole team looks great on paper, but only time will tell if it can work out.
solid pitching and no hitting.
But no hitting, really? If you don't consider Victor Martinez or Kevin Youkilis "hitters", then I don't know what a hitter is. Youk is an OPS machine and V-Mart is also a .300 hitter with 20-25 homerun power and can drive in 100+ RBI's. Also, the Sox signed Mike Cameron.. who is a similar hitter to Jason Bay, less pop and strikes out a lot (but fewer than K-Bay). If Adrian Beltre's offensive numbers improve from the ones of his 2008 season (playing in Fenway and using the friendly monster) then both players (combined) could contribute just as much or even more than Bay and Lowell combined. And then again, we got two guys who play gold glove caliber defense.. Bay and the injury prone Lowell are awful defenders.
People need to stop overrating Bay.. he's too much of a streaky hitter, he had a hot start at the beginning of 2009 then just flatout sucked for almost two months where he hit as awful as Yunesky Betancourt.
Seriously, the stats don't lie:
Jason Bay 2009 WAR: 3.5 (UZR: -8)
Mike Cameron 2009 WAR: 4.3 (UZR: +6)
Mike Lowell 2008 WAR: 3.2 (UZR: +11.1)
Adrian Beltre 2008 WAR: 4.1 (UZR: +12.7)
I used the 2008 WAR on the Lowell/Beltre comparison due to injuries they faced in 2009.. but even if you're curious, in 2009 Beltre's WAR was 2.4 while Lowell's was 1.2. Lowell and Beltre had very similar fielding stats in 2008.. but it comes down to who won the gold glove and has better mechanics, that would be Beltre.
