Are the Red Sox the second best team in the American League?
Probably the second-best team in baseball. Are the Red Sox we’ll see in Fort Myers better than in October? I think they’re better this year. I’ll tell you why. The whole run-scoring thing, I’m not that worried about. I think that the depth of the lineup will be very good. I think the depth of the roster is much better. It’s amazing to me they finished second, they had the second-best record, the second-best run differential, and they had 55 games started by [Brad] Penny, [John] Smoltz, [Paul] Bird, a bad [Daisuke] Matsuzaka, [Michael] Bowden and [Junichi] Tazawa. In 55 games, more than one-third of their games, their starting pitchers had a 6.28 earned run average, and they still had the second-best run differential and record in the league. They could change that a lot.” By the way, in talking to our old friend Mike Roberts, who used to be a college coach but he runs the baseball program at Athletes Performance in Scottsdale, he said that Matsuzaka is in unbelievable shape. He’s been
