2006 Position Analysis: SP

"You can never have enough starting pitching," is how the old adage goes, and as the success of the 2005 White Sox and Astros demonstrated, some of those old sayings really do ring true. Coupled with a miserable bullpen, the Sox starters in 2005 did nothing to help the cause of a championship defense. This year, things look to be a bit different. The familiar faces (Schilling, Wakefield, Arroyo, Clement, Wells) have been supplemented by a few new ones (Beckett, Papelbon). Whereas the Bosont pitching depth in 2005 hinged on players who were given fliers, the depth in 2006 appears legit.

(Let's try a different format for this article, shall we? I'm kinda getting tired of copying and pasting the stats from Baseball Reference and The Baseball Cube, so from here on out I'll just link you the pages for each respective player.)

Curt Schilling. Will he or won't he be able to pitch at the level required of the man who saved the 2004 season? Ankle surgery in the '04 offseason more or less ensured that hhe would be ineffective in 2005, and though he tried several times to come back, he was mainly unsuccessful.

Behind him, we've got that man, the myth, the legend: Tim Wakefield. When he's on, his knucleball will float and flutter with the most acrobatic of butterflies, but when it's off, you might as well put a scoreboard up on at the edge of each dugout to keep track of the trucks opposing batters will hit on the Mass Pike. You pretty much know what you're going to get from Wake. Despite his age, he's likely good for around 200 innings, 100+ strikeouts, and somewhere around 12 or 13 wins. The longest tenured player on the Sox roster, he will probably be smarted at the outset by the transition from the Mirabelli Era.

David Wells is the other established veteran on this starting staff, and though he pitched very well for a man pushing his mid 40's, he has requested a trade to the West Coast so as to finish his career close to his family. Theo and the front office have promised to do everything possible to get him out there, but his experience and ability, not to mention the depth he brings to rotation, are far too valuable to be replaced by a bag of balls and some Chesapeake Mud.

Getting younger as we move on, you've got Matt Clement, Bronson Arroyo, and our big offseason acquisition, Josh Beckett.Clement needs to come in and prove to everybody that the spurts of dominance and just filthy stuff he showed off at the beginning of 2005 were not flukes, and that despite his declining stats (particularly in the second half) he is worth the $18 million dollars that are still his due from John Henry. Arroyo started off last season with a bang, but when he served his suspension for his part in the beanball war in Tampa Bay he came back a different pitcher. His spot in the rotation is probably the most vulnerable because of his mechanics and his almost rubber arm. Beckett, of course, is most famous for his contributions to the cause of the 2003 World Series-winning Florida Marlins and his WS MVP, but he's just as well known for an incredible average away ERA and recurring blister problems. The fact that he's never once pitched 200 innings in a season and the rumors of a terrifying shoulder MRI continue to haunt him, and though he is potentially the best pitcher to have moved this offseason, he is going to be surrounded by questions. Fenway isn't known as the friendliest place for pitching there if you're not familiar with it, don't ya know? Still, with the depth the Sox are bringing into camp this week, it's hard to see them not see some measure of improvement over last year's rotation.

The one man we have yet to look at, however, could possibly be the most influential of all the starting pitching question marks. I'm talking, of course, of everyone's favorite prospect golden boy Jonathan Papelbon. He's young, he throws smoke, and he was a jolt of life when the Sox needed it down the stretch last summer. He's drawn comparisons to Roger Clemens, and though he has been referenced as a potentially dominant closer, he's being groomed as a starter, and that's the way it should be. Should the Sox trade away David Wells sometime before the beginning of the season, I would see Papelbon as most likely to take his spot in the rotation, with Arroyo remaining in the 'pen. This guy has made every attempt in the offseason to brush aside the comparisons with the Rocket in all but one respect: his workout routine. Gearing up early in his career to make his physical well-being priority number one, Paps could make some serious noise going out.

So despite the question mark and doubts, the Red Sox seem to have taken that old baseball saying to heart, helping take some of the false "Moneyball" shine applied by the media off the front office and proving that "You really can't have enough starting pitching."