Ok. When the Sox win 8-12 more than 72, prepare to have this thrown in your face.

Good to know. Looking forward to October when you'll try to make it seem like you were "close".

Enjoy hoping on the Royals bandwagon. Good riddance

Gee. Maybe he meant it he hasn't been back. LOL.

If you are going to follow another team, then go for Detroit. Detroit is about 1000 times more likely to win the world series than KC.

Maybe if Detroit trades Justin Verlander, Miguel Cabrera, and Prince Fielder to KC for players like Chris Getz, then the Royals might have a chance to win the AL Central. It has to be something like Detroit giving up their top talent, and KC not giving up much. That is the only chance KC has. Probably not going to happen.

"Sox will win 58-72; KC 78-86. Mark it down. "
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we played this game before. you told us to mark something down so we did... you were wrong of course but continued to pretend like you were not. why would we play again?

We'll always have that memory.

Ceb48: The Sox offense will carry the Achilles heel rotation to 95+ wins.

Result: At one time or another, 5 of the Sox hitters rank in the bottom 10 in MLB in hitting, and the rotation that was in the top half of the league in every category could not overcome en route to 79 wins.

Ceb48: I was close.

mark it down!

put the pipe down when its hot

I feel your pain for sure but could never abandon the SOX. KW makes it a challenge however. It great to get puffed up and knock KC who are operating on a Peavy, Rios, Dunn budget (35 million year). I'd like to see Kenny even field a team with those $$. It's like a guy with a new Vette bragging that he can beat some kid in a hopped up 1998 Mustang that he bought for 3 grand.

it's just baseball...if your post is true and not a joke then you might want to reevaluate priorities..

i enjoy watching the sox , go to a handful of games each year..but if they don't win another division title in my lifetime i'm not losing sleep over it..

over the years i've probably worried more about where my softball teams were in the standings over were the sox finished...especially when i wa sin the army and you could get out of duty if you played on high level travel teams..

Sorry I was a third of a run off on the starters' ERA last season. Know that it was a monumental error. Have to admit that I was way across the ocean on the offense, which I had pegged as better with Dunn on the team. Figured him for 40 or more HR's, being in a friendlier park, and a .260 BA. They would have been better off putting AJ in as DH, and playing Flowers more behind the plate.. or to call up a slew of minor league prospects. Sure they would have hit better than .160, if only because the pitchers would not be familiar with them.

Are you saying that you think that the Sox could win as many as 80 with this lineup, the loss of CQ, Buerhle, and Santos? How can you think that they won't be worse than 2011?

We've all explained to you over and over again how they are not much worse off having lost that trio. Go back and read any of the dozens of responses to your posts and you'll have your answer.

Now, if they get 73 or 74 wins, don't say that I was way off. Remember, I've said 58 (PK is out for the year, as is Danks, and the Unfabulous Quartet repeat their 2011's), all the way up to 72 ( The Unfabulous Quartet repeat, but PK and the staff are healthy, Peavy excluded, of course).

If I thought that the Unfabulous were to turn Fabulous this season, and that they'd be a healthy team, I'd say a whole bunch of wins would occur...but we both know that this won't happen, right? Figure it out, Joe. Last year, they won 79 and were the healthiest team in the division. We can't count on MN having equally bad luck with injuries this season, and everyone concedes that KC has improved somewhat. CLE's pen has improved, and it's possible that VMart will be ready by late season.

The Sox lost Buerhle, Santos, and Quentin, and added no immediate replacements. They also lost Pierre...that might add 3 or 4 wins, I'll grant. Allowing for modest improvements for the UQ, and the removal of Pierre, the losses of key players should mean 8-12 fewer wins, to be conservative. Say it ain't so, Joe!

Maybe they'll improve if we trade Floyd and Danks for a few prospects who'll be ready in a few years. The Sox should improve their record from last season , right? How do you improve from one season to the next by trading for prospects who are not ready? Agree that this might pay off in a few years, after PK has retired, but not in 2012.

"Now, if they get 73 or 74 wins, don't say that I was way off"

You are giving yourself a 14 win margin of error. You don't then get to claim "close" if it falls outside of that range. Every team in major league baseball fell within a margin of 46 wins last year. That was with a team winning over 100, and team losing well over a hundred (neither of which are common). Your prediction covers a third of that spread. So no, if it even falls ONE win outside of your range, you don't get to say you were "close".

"The Sox lost Buerhle, Santos, and Quentin, and added no immediate replacements"

Sale, Reed, and Viciedo are their replacements, whether you like it or not. We've already had this discussion. Even if all three of those guys came out right at replacement level (which is not hard to do) you'd still only lose around 8 wins. For reference, Juan Pierre was a flat zero in WAR last year, so all three of them would have to be even less valuable than Juan Pierre for your assessment to hold water.

You keep coming out with these assessments, and you keep getting shown why you're off base. Some people might actually try learning from that.

They would win 80-84 with this team if they had acquired Pujols, Fielder, and kept Buerhle, but they're way far from that territory. If MN gets the injury bug again, they, SEA, and BAL will be the only three teams in the AL with worse records than the Sox. Will be pleasantly shocked if they do 8-12 more wins than my topmost of the range. I'm being kind with the 72, of course. Can't see an ALC champion with more than 86 wins this season, not even DET or KC. Not figuring in the 3-10 spring; it's only S.T; I'd say the same if they were 13-0.

You have heard that Quentin is already hurt right?

Who said anything about improving? I simply said that your projected ceiling of 72 wins is pretty far off base, because it is. It doesn't take into account any of the possible positives. It assumes that none of the players who struggled last year will improve, and assumes that no other players could possibly replace the players we've "lost". The fact is, none of the players that were shipped out were that valuable. We haven't lost a Pujols or a Mariano Rivera.

I look at the loss of M.B. as 3 fewer wins, CQ, 3, Santos 4 because of more strain on the starters and pen. The loss of Pierre should give the Sox at least 2 wins. Allowing for slight improvements by ALL of the UQ, that'd be somewhere in the low 70's. One reasonable scenario would seem to be that two of the UQ repeat their 2011's, one has a breakout year, and one has modest improvement, which could put it as slightly worse than last year. However, I feel quite comfortable with 72 being the most optimistic outcome.

Sorry, you can't replace somewhat reliable players with inexperienced ones, and expect to improve the next season. Agree that the future might be a little better, but this season's going to be heck.

Agree. However, Buerhle is still one of the 25 best starters in baseball, Santos had 5 good months out of 6, thus did not take a season off like AD, GB, AR, and Peavy (except for a few nice starts). Sure, CQ is hurt, but he wasn't when they traded him. They should have packaged him for a couple of top prospects, at least. The guy was the 2nd best hitter on the team last year, for goodness sakes. It's possible that at least one of the UQ will have a breakout year, but I think that the most likely scenario is that Peavy wins 10-12, Dunn, Rios, and Beckham will have 15-20 HR's apiece, and will bat between .220-.240.