Developed Teams 2011: Boston Red Sox

Inspired by the historic series on ESPN and Fox, I've decided to start my developed teams project with the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs (separately, of course). Seems like as good a place to start as any. So without further ado, here's how the Boston Red Sox would look today if they were allowed to keep all the greats and near-greats that they developed through their minor league system:

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).

The hottest player who Boston let get away is clearly Hanley Ramirez, who played exactly 2 games for the Sox before starting off an All-Star career following a trade to Florida. He's currently off to a slow start, but like Pedroia we should count on him to improve. Also headed to Florida in that same trade is Developed Boston's 5th starter Anibal Sanchez. This brings up an interesting quality of these teams: players who were developed by a certain team, but who never played any games with that team. The bottom three starters in Boston's rotation share this quality.

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.