Five Aces

Shank is clearly delighted with the 2020 'bridge year' Boston Red Sox. He's written 11 columns so far this month, and all but one of them was about the Red Sox. Unsurprisingly, every single one of them was negative in tone and / or heavily critical of the Red Sox in some manner.

And the hits just keep on coming…

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The 1971 Baltimore Orioles famously had four 20-game winners and advanced to the seventh game of the World Series. Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, and Pat Dobson all made 30 or more starts and all pitched 224 or more innings. Three of them exceeded 280 innings.

The world champion 2004 Red Sox had five starting pitchers who never got hurt. Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, Derek Lowe, Tim Wakefield, and Bronson Arroyo each started at least 29 games and logged no fewer than 178 innings.

Fast-forward to 2020 and a Red Sox team with almost zero reliability in the starting rotation. More suspects than prospects.

These are not the Red Sox of “we have five aces.’’