Pitchers and Catchers

I hope these two get there 'ish' together this year!

Pitchers and catchers have reported to Fort Myers at the Red Sox new Fenway South, officially known as JetBlue Park.  It's already a weird vibe with Tim Wakefield's retirement on Friday and I'm trying extremely hard to get excited about the 2012 season but I cannot get the image of complete failure out of my head as Papelbon blew the last game of the season against Baltimore.

The new additions of Ryan Sweeney, Cody Ross, Nick Punto, Andrew Bailey and of course the managerial addition of Bobby Valentine is supposedly going to turn things around, erase last years memories, and start ahead on another championship journey.  With veteran leadership from Youk, Papi, Pedroia, Lester, Buck, Beckett, A-Gon, and [if we had made the playoffs I woulda been MVP but who cares cuz I still make 8 mill a year] Ellsbury things have the potential to do just that.

Problems...well as of right now we don't have a complete outfield with Crawford out for a bit of time after having wrist surgery, evidently J.D. Drew retired (did anyone notice?), and there are a bunch of back-ups fighting for the positions.  We also got rid of both of our shortstops, good luck Scutaro and Lowrie wherever you are; so now Mike Aviles, Nick Punto, and future phenom Jose Iglesias are fighting for the spot to be the next ex-Red Sox shortstop.

As of now I have no predictions for this year because after last year only God knows how this will turn out.  As spring training begins, progresses, and wraps up I'll continue to monitor how things look and maybe I'll put out a prediction before the season begins.  Until then though the full squad should be in Ft. Myers by this weekend and the first games against Northeastern and BC are on March 3rd.

This is either gonna go very well or just be an utter disaster...no in between.