10 players from this team are currently on Boston's real-life active roster (6 of whom are legitimate stars), which seems to be pretty good in terms of player retention. I don't really know how it will stack up against later teams, as I've just started this project and patterns haven't really started to emerge yet. It will generally be the case that teams use a glut of homegrown players on their roster, as they're usually both young and cheap. 2 more players (both from the bench) are still in Boston's system, but have yet to log any playing time in 2011. The fact that players of this sort are on the team at all bespeaks a relative lack of serviceable major league position players developed by Boston.
In fact, their roster is so weak that they couldn't even fill a whole 9 spots with current major leaguers - as you'll notice, flameout prospect Brandon Moss (you might remember him from the Manny Ramirez deal?) is currently languishing in the Phillies' AAA affiliate. And David Eckstein on the bench is still an unsigned free agent. But the rest of the lineup should make up for the weak links. Jacoby Ellsbury has bounced back from an injury-wasted year, and Dustin Pedroia should follow suit soon. Kevin Youkilis plays third base in real life (IRL), but I had to shift him to first due to a surplus of infielders (Freddy Sanchez won a batting title in '06 while playing third base... let's just ignore that he hasn't played there since).
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Carl Pavano was drafted by the Red Sox and made it all the way to AAA in their system before being traded to Montreal for Pedro Martinez the year before his debut. Jorge de la Rosa was signed by Arizona, but only pitched for them for one year before jumping ship for the Mexican Leagues for a year. The Red Sox then picked him up, developed him all the way through AAA, then sent him to Milwaukee (by way of Arizona) again a year before his debut. The same situation happened with their nos. 2 and 3 setup men, Francisco and Betancourt respectively.
You'll notice two starting pitchers in relief pitcher slots. I felt no need to punish teams that have developed an excess of starters by relegating their nos. 6 through 8 or 9 to fantastical Developed AAA teams. So on teams that deserve it, I've given them a little extra flexibility. If we were going on 2011 stats alone, Justin Masterson (5-2, 2.52 ERA) would clearly replace Pavano (2-4, 5.30), but as I said before I'm going more on pre-season predictions, which are more permanent and requires less keeping track.
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