Column: Aging pitchers to blame for Boston’s slow start

Therefore, it was much to the surprise of seasoned journalists, such as Boston’s own Gordon Edes, when the Boston Red Sox — a team many “experts” predicted to win the World Series — began the season 0-6, swept by both the defending American League champion Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians, one of last year’s weakest teams.

Statistically, the Red Sox’s poor effort means little. They rest 4.5 games behind division leader Baltimore (as a side note: if the playoffs began today, the Rangers would face the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Kansas City Royals would face the Orioles. Do you really think Baltimore is going to win the AL East?). Simply put, the Red Sox need to win six more games than Baltimore (and five more than the Yankees and Blue Jays, and simply more than the Rays) to win the division.

Little has changed in terms of what the Red Sox must accomplish, but the team’s poor start has illuminated some of its flaws. A lot of offseason talk focused on the team’s high-profile acquisitions — new first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, for example, ranked fifth among all position players in Wins Above Replacement, a metric of value added, last year — while ignoring the painful truth that much of the team’s finances remain tied up in overpaid, declining and rapidly aging starting pitching.

Starter Josh Beckett, albeit mired by back problems throughout the previous year, posted a WAR of -1.0, meaning that Beckett’s value was the equivalent of one win worse than a replacement level player. The Red Sox owe Beckett $63 million over the next four years, a worrisome figure to pay for unacceptably low performance levels.

Equally as worrisome as Beckett (maybe not equally, but only because he regularly starts) is the status of John Lackey. Like Beckett, Lackey is grossly overpaid ($61 million over the next four years) and aging (Beckett turns 31 in May and Lackey turns 33 in October). For a pitcher who is exiting his prime years, Lackey has not made the transition gracefully: His strikeout-to-walk ratio was 2.2, the worst since his first season, caused by a marked decline in strikeouts per nine innings (Lackey’s 6.5 mark was his lowest since rookie year). Furthermore, Lackey is a pitcher who always gives up many hits (his lowest mark in his career was 8.4 hits per nine innings in 2006).

Perhaps I exaggerate the state of the Red Sox pitching staff; after all the rotation includes Clay Buchholz, the 2010 Major League Baseball leader in ERA+, a measure of a pitcher’s run-prevention relative to his league, and one of the league’s top pitchers, Jon Lester, who has posted WAR of 5.0 or more in each of the past three seasons. Lester is undoubtedly a great pitcher, yet we should expect Buchholz to regress this season; opponents had a batting average of .261 on balls in play against him last year, an unusually low figure that hints at Buchholz’s stellar luck.

I must admit that the Red Sox will be a good team, likely a playoff team. Despite missing all-star first baseman Kevin Youkilis for the remaining 40 games and 2008 AL MVP Dustin Pedroia for over half the season, the Red Sox still scored the second-most runs in all of baseball. Adding one of the best players in the game (Gonzalez) and one of the league’s top outfielders (Carl Crawford had a WAR of 5.2 in 2010) will make a strong offense formidable.

Perhaps the resident Miss Cleos at ESPN will be correct in their estimations of the Red Sox’s World Series hopes. One thing, however, is certain. The future of the Red Sox holds much more variability than the numerous experts who expected the Red Sox to win an eighth World Series title predicted; after all, that’s what you get for depending upon a couple of declining 30-year-old arms.