Red Sox bold predictions for 2016
By Sean Penney
Clay Buchholz will set a career high in innings pitched
Why it could happen: Buchholz has been deemed too injury prone to rely on as a 200 inning workhorse, but this is the year he will make a serious run at it. A look at his track record reveals that Buchholz manages to stay healthy enough to reach at least 170 innings in even years since he became a full-time starter, but he’s never been able to do so in consecutive years.
2010: 173.2 innings
2011: 82.2 innings
2012: 189.1 innings
2013: 108.1 innings
2014: 170.1 innings
2015: 113.1 innings
Following the every-other-year pattern suggests that Buchholz should return to tossing 170+ innings in 2016, which wouldn’t put him far off from the 190 innings he needs to set a new career high (fine, 189.2 innings would suffice if you want to nit-pick).
Next: Carson Smith to start season on DL
Red Sox will win 95 games
Why it could happen: Too optimistic? The Kansas City Royals won 95 games a year ago to lead the American League before going on to win the World Series. Meanwhile the Red Sox only won 78 games and finished last in their division. It would take a massive leap to get into this territory, but we’ve seen this franchise pull it off before. Boston won 69 games in 2012, but after rebuilding the roster that winter they came back to win 97 the following year and won the World Series. Time for a repeat performance? The Red Sox added a legitimate ace to anchor their rotation, solidified their bullpen, added to their bench and are bound to get bounce-back performances from at least some of their veterans that let them down last year. 95 wins may be a reach, but the good news is that it may not even take that many to come out on top of a competitive AL East division.