Their position quite favorable

Theirs is the team to beat, and Julian Tavarez (left) and Manny Ramírez obviously are No. 1 with each other, too. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

FORT MYERS, Fla. - You're on top. Can you handle it?

You can't lapse back into that narcissistic, woe-is-me routine. There is no woe. There is only Whoa!

The Boston Red Sox are baseball's gold standard. Even the Yankees admit it.

"We look up to them," says Jorge Posada, and we all know who "them" is.

"This is the first time in my five years we are not the team to beat," says Alex Rodriguez, and he isn't referring to the Blue Jays, even if they are the smart choice among baseball Wise Guys to make the American League East a three-team race. (Yeah, yeah, I've been saying that for three years, but this time I mean it.)

No, no, it's the Boston Red Sox - the defending world champion Boston Red Sox - who are the logical favorites to win the 2008 World Series.

The Red Sox have the ideal 1-2 winning combination: money and brains. One is of little use without the other.

The situation isn't perfect. No one's ever is (ask the Patriots). If you must worry, well, the catcher will be 36 April 11, the left fielder will be 36 May 30, and the third baseman turns 34 tomorrow. A key setup man turns 42 March 10 and a starting pitcher turns 42 Aug. 2, although that's only 35 or so in knuckleball years.

Oh, and the shortstop, the right fielder, and the designated hitter all turned 32 within four days of each other last November, and see what astrologers and/or numerologists can make of that.

But before you are forced to endure any smirking from that Joisey college roommate of yours, remind that Yankees fan in your life that the catcher in the Bronx is 36, the first baseman/DH is 37, the center fielder is 34, the right fielder will turn 34 in March, the shortstop will turn 34 in June, the left fielder will turn 34 in June, the third baseman will turn 33 in July, one righthanded starting pitcher is 39, one lefthanded starting pitcher will turn 36 in June, and the hallowed closer is 38.

Plenty of "Sunshine Boys" jokes to go around in both cities, is what I'm saying.

If you're going to defend your title in this sport, and you could wish for one key component, is there anyone in baseball who wouldn't say "sound starting pitching"?

This, of course, is precisely what the Red Sox did not have when they were attempting to repeat 2004. Pedro Martínez and Derek Lowe were gone, and Curt Schilling went down. It was fairly amazin' that they made it back to the postseason at all in 2005, and it was completely predictable that they would go out quickly. That team barely had a No. 1 starter, let alone a No. 2.

Once again, Schilling is hors de combat. There's even a chance we may never see him again. (I said "a chance," Curt.) Truth be told, this is not a catastrophe. It's merely an annoyance.

The rotation of Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield, Jon Lester, and Clay Buchholz is good enough to get the job done. I'm not saying this is the greatest rotation of all time, or even the best rotation in the division (a healthy Toronto will be formidable), but it's pretty good, and there aren't too many better.

I say that because I take Beckett as a given ace, because I believe Dice-K will be much better, because I expect Wake to be a 10- to 13-win guy, because I believe Lester is clearly a 15-game winner ready to happen, and because if you don't think Buchholz has a chance to be special, I would question whether you really like this game at all.

Something will go wrong. It always does. Someone else may have to step in, or there may be a trade for a No. 5 type, but when it's all said and done, the Red Sox will enjoy better starting pitching than most folks. I don't see how anyone can deny that.

Jonathan Papelbon is another given. John Farrell and Terry Francona found the perfect workload for him last year, and you saw what he had to offer in the postseason as a result. At 27, he's looking at many prosperous years as the Mariano Rivera of his time.

The rest of the bullpen?

That's a concern. There is no way Hideki Okajima will duplicate the first half of last year ever again, so all we can ask is for him to find some happy medium between that All-Star mode and the rocky second half of the season. If he can't, then someone else will have to present himself. Could that someone be Manny Delcarmen? Many think it will be.

There wasn't much tinkering with this group, because there didn't have to be. A second reason is that Theo Epstein looked to see what, as the British say, was "on offer," and he said, "No thanks."

"It was all about the external dynamics of the marketplace," Epstein explains in his best Yale-ese. "In our opinion, the marketplace was really thin. The only way to acquire anyone was to overpay. So staying out of the marketplace was a victory in itself."

He also sounds like a man whose heart was never really in the Santana Sweepstakes.

"It wasn't just a matter of giving up one good young player," Epstein says. "It would have meant giving up a whole generation of talent." There is no doubt, by the way, that Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is of the same opinion.

The only thing remaining to be done to make this a truly happy camp is to announce a contract extension for a man who has proven beyond all doubt that he is the right man in the right place at the right time. Francona gets every aspect of being the manager of the Boston Red Sox in this organization in this clubhouse for this constituency in the year 2008.

So sign him, already.

Asked if a Francona signing were a slam dunk, Theo says, "Maybe not a slam dunk. Just a lefthanded layup."

That's it. There's no Red Sox controversy, not even that center-field thing. "When they say it's boring here," says Francona, "that's when I like it."

These aren't your grandfather's or your Uncle Louie's Red Sox. Can you handle it?

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.