How do the Red Sox compare to the rest of the AL East?
The 2021 AL East was arguably the most stacked division in baseball history. No division had ever featured four 90-win teams before, but the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Rays, New York Yankees all exceeded that threshold last year.
But 2021 is old news. 2022 is a brand-new year, and each roster comes into the season after undergoing some minor turnover. As we (hopefully) approach Opening Day, I decided to look at how the Red Sox measure up to the other powerhouses in the AL East.
To come up with a quantitative answer, I assigned point totals to each position. Having the best player at a position in the division gets you ten points, having the second-best gets you seven points, third is five points, fourth is three points, and fifth is one point. For the starting rotation, those numbers move to twenty, fifteen, ten, five, and one.
This is not a perfect way to predict team success, of course, but it should give us an idea of how much work the Red Sox still need to do in building a competitive team.