Red Sox Offense

Most people are predicting that the Boston Red Sox offense will decline from last year's historic levels mainly because second baseman Todd Walker's bat has been replaced with the bat of Pokey Reese and also because most people don't expect players like Bill Mueller, David Ortiz, Trot Nixon and Jason Varitek to be able to repeat their performance from last year. I say that the Red Sox offense will probably score even more runs this year because:

- Nomar Garciaparra will move from the third spot in the batting order to clean-up and Manny Ramirez will take his spot at third. Last year Nomar had 79 opportunities with runners in scoring position with 2 outs but he only batted .228 in those situations (with 2 HR and 26 RBI). Manny only had 54 opportunities with RISP and 2 outs but he hit .370 in those situations (with 4 HR and 26 RBI). The switch in batting positions should result in Manny getting more RBI chances and I also don't expect Nomar to have such poor numbers this year with RISP and 2 outs (in 2002 Nomar had 73 AB in that situation but hit .342 with 5 HR and 40 RBI). Simply put - this switch should lead to more runs scored for the Red Sox.

- True the Red Sox lost Todd Walker's bat but they also lost Jeremy Giambi's too. Giambi last year had 127 AB for the Red Sox and he only hit .197. If you combined Walker's AB's with Giambi's they only hit .267 - I think even worst case pessimists think that between Pokey Reese, Mark Bellhorn and Ellis Burks .267 will be a number that is easily topped.

- People seem to forget that last year the Red Sox had significant second half drop off's from Varitek, Kevin Millar and Nomar. Sure Mueller probably won't win the batting title this year but I'm not expecting anyone else to significantly drop off from last year's levels. In fact I'm looking for a number of players to improve.