By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

In the death throes of the Bobby Valentine era, it was laughable to imagine the Red Sox as anything even close to resembling a feel-good story. Yet here we are at the end of April, with the Red Sox leading the AL East by three games while producing moments like this. And were those cheers from the Fenway faithful for John Lackey? It’s all too much to contemplate.

For a team not expected to do much of anything this year, Boston’s hot start comes as even more of a surprise. Let’s break down how they’re doing it, compared to their ho-hum start to the 2012 season.

The difference hasn’t come from the offense; in fact, the Sox have scored a nearly identical number of runs as they did last April. Daniel Nava and Shane Victorino have been pleasant offensive surprises, picking up the slack for the struggling bats of Will Middlebrooks and Stephen Drew. Still, on paper, this team shouldn’t produce nearly as much as last year’s lineup. One of the big question marks going forward is if the Sox will be able to sustain this level of run production—their team BAbip of .340 suggests a bit of a drop-off may be coming soon.

The transformation from a .500 team in April to a division leader has come about through improved performance on the mound. Resurgent stuff from Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester, as well as offseason pickup Ryan Dempster, has made Boston’s pitching staff into the American League’s second-best unit, behind only Texas. The bullpen has been on par with the starters; instead of comically blowing leads as they did last April, the relief staff, led by a healthy Andrew Bailey, has been dependable in locking up wins. As a whole, Boston hurlers have struck out nearly 100 more batters than they did through the first month of 2012, a big reason for their success.

Apparently that’s the formula for morphing from the city’s most scorned team into perhaps its most inspirational: a new cast of characters, solid bats, and lockdown pitching. Still, the team has yet to play even a sixth of its full schedule, so if you’ve been saving up some vitriol to spew at John Henry and crew, stay tuned.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

With the signings of Josh Hamilton and Zack Greinke last week, the Hot Stove reached its boiling point. Another year, another awe-inspiring spectacle of money being thrown around by front offices desperate for a new toy.

The cash hemorrhages we see every winter for top free agents leads me to wonder if teams ever hope to accrue back the value of a contract like Hamilton’s or Greinke’s. But for every massive free agent contract, there are many more sensible, well-negotiated moves that are not subject to the superstar premium. This fact leads to the broader question: how do MLB teams price the free agents they sign?

For an easy, comparable measure of value, I’ll use WAR. This allows me to assess position players and pitchers together, so I can come to a total rate that teams pay free agents for their per-unit value.

I compiled a list of all the free agents to sign with an MLB team as of Tuesday night, then recorded their WAR from the 2012 season, which I used as a projection for how we might expect them to perform in 2013. Obviously, this is a quick and dirty method for predicting performance—it doesn’t incorporate age or injury history, for one thing—but recent form is essentially what front offices are paying for. I am not suggesting that every player is going to exactly replicate his play from a year ago, but rather that this is the primary criterion by which a team and a player settle on a contract.

Next, I logged the per-year dollar average from each player’s new contract—essentially, what his team will be paying him in 2013. With these pieces of information, I was now able to estimate the going market rate per WAR.

Thus far, teams have allocated about $453 million in 2013 for an expected 98.7 WAR, which comes out to $4.6 million per WAR. The average per-WAR cost for last year’s free agent class was $4.5 million, so the market has remained essentially the same. In fact, assuming two percent inflation from one year to the next, the figures are exactly the same, with the extra $0.1 million simply a product of the general rise in the price level.

For their part, the Red Sox have not exactly been buying low this offseason. The six players the team signed this offseason project to produce 13.7 WAR, at a cost of $116.75 million in 2013. That amounts to $8.5 million per WAR, or nearly double the rate of the rest of the league. This number is a bit inflated, given that the Red Sox are banking on more productive campaigns in 2013 from Mike Napoli and Stephen Drew, but the front office certainly wasn’t playing hardball during its negotiations.

With most of the big free agent names now off the market, this number is not likely to change much in the coming weeks. The Sox will have to depend on the notion that they rightly overpaid for premium performance, something that hasn’t quite held up for the past few free agent classes to come to Fenway.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

I've written about the "winner's curse" in this space before, but as a quick recap: the winner's curse refers to the phenomenon in which the winner of a sealed-bid style auction (when each party knows only his or her own bid) almost always overpays for the item won, since the most extreme valuation among a group is typically not the correct one.

Why is this relevant? Well, given the financial flexibility with which the Red Sox unexpectedly find themselves this offseason, they're in prime position to overbid for eligible free agents. Even worse, this winter's supply of free agents won't be good enough to meet the demand in the marketplace, so the players that are available will likely be able to command greater bargaining power in negotiating their new contracts.

On the other hand, the front office needs to improve this team, and fast. Ownership will not want to risk the further tarnish that another losing season -- let alone another 90-loss season -- would smear on its brand and its bottom line. The quickest and easiest fix for this problem is to throw cash at it until it goes away, or at least recedes a little bit into the distance.

For that reason, you can bet the Red Sox will make a few moves in free agency, in addition to bringing back Cody Ross, Jacoby Ellsbury, and David Ortiz for another season; they have no excuse to stand pat, after the Dodgers excavated them from the worst of the rubble of bad contracts littering their books. So how big of a splash will they ultimately make? Let's look at a few potential additions and what they would mean to the Red Sox for next season and beyond.

The Big Fish: Josh Hamilton

Why sign him: He's been known to hit baseballs pretty hard. Hamilton is coming off of a career-high 43 home run season, and he played in 148 games, his most since 2008. An up-and-down second half of the season may also reduce his value, as will things like "my eyes got stuck." Whoever signs Hamilton assumes a certain risk you don't get with many other ballplayers.

Why pass on him: That whole winner's curse thing. Hamilton is almost certain to be overpaid by the end of his deal, given that he'll turn 32 next year -- generally not a good age for a new contract to begin. He was nagged by injuries on and off pretty much all season, and he won't be an effective defensive outfielder much longer. The bottom line is the contract Hamilton signs this offseason will probably pay more for his past performance than what he’ll produce in the future.

Verdict: Tempting, but no.

The Smaller Fish: Mike Napoli

Why sign him: James Loney didn't win many hearts and minds during his brief Boston cameo at first base, and the Red Sox could use a slugging first baseman. Napoli fits the bill, beating the baseball into submission in 2011 on his way to posting a .631 slugging percentage and a 1.046 OPS.

Why pass on him: His 2011 season is far and away the best he's ever put together, so there's no reason to expect that on a consistent basis. He'll still hit home runs and draw walks, but he won't do much else. And just like Hamilton, he's already in his early 30's. Age regression, the biggest reason teams lose value on free agent contracts, seems like a fair assumption here as well.

Verdict: Negative, not enough upside.

Carl Crawford, Part II: B.J. Upton

Why sign him: At 28 years old, he's about as young as you'll find anyone on the free agent market, and that's important since a large part of what he brings to the table is related to his speed. His power numbers have risen each of the last five seasons, and his ugly batting average numbers will likely depress his value somewhat. Whoever signs him will probably get the best three or four seasons of his career, which you can't say for many free agent signings.

Why pass on him: He's a speedy free agent outfielder from Tampa Bay. He strikes out more than once per game. He doesn't get on base much, and he can't hit for average.

Verdict: Ah, what the heck, let's give it a whirl.

The Risky Venture: Brandon McCarthy

Why sign him: When healthy, he's been a top-two starter the last couple of years. He hasn't hit 30 yet. The Red Sox pitching staff was a mess last season. John Lackey will probably factor heavily in the rotation next year. That seems like a pretty compelling case to me.

Why pass on him: "…when healthy." McCarthy has only topped 115 innings in a season once in his career, and he has dealt with persistently recurring shoulder problems for the last five seasons. He's been comparatively healthier the last two seasons, but it's difficult to count on him pitching the full year.

Verdict: On a short contract, go for it.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

Over the past ten seasons, the Boston Red Sox have had quite a few heroes. Some, like Damon or Pedro, may seem as if they played closer to 20 seasons ago, and a new cast of stars, perhaps led by Will Middlebrooks, might one day take their place in Fenway lore. But the 2012 season has given us ample opportunity to appreciate the one constant and the biggest hero of these past ten years, the apparently ageless David Ortiz.

After taking two out of three from the Blue Jays, the Red Sox currently stand two games above .500, which, while not a remarkable achievement in itself, feels awfully satisfying given that the Sox were sitting at 13-19 just over three weeks ago. And much of the credit for keeping the Sox afloat during their early season struggles must go to Ortiz, who carried the offense through April and May.

At 36, Ortiz is on pace for his best season since 2007, in which he finished fourth in the MVP voting. His .987 OPS is third in the American League, and he’s in the top ten in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging with a .315/.391/.596 line.

The most incredible thing about his early season run is that it has come exactly three years after his career was pronounced dead, or at best barely breathing, after a nightmare start to the 2009 season. Even after turning his season around with a late summer surge, Red Sox management was spooked; since then, they have kept Ortiz on a series of one-year leashes, every time half expecting a season full of sad shakes of the head and postgame ponderings on the meaning of mortality. His 2010 season was a pleasant surprise, but apparently not enough to sway anyone that a multi-year deal was a prudent investment for fear of the inevitable age regression lurking the following spring.

But a funny thing happened—every year since ’09, Ortiz got better. Over this span, he’s hit for more power and for a better average, his strikeout rates are down, and he’s squaring up the ball, hitting more line drives. His last four seasons resemble a player just entering his peak years, not a guy who has logged 7,500 plate appearances in his major league career (images courtesy of TruMedia Networks).

Plotted below is the MLB-average OPS since 1901 for players aged 33 to 36, along with the corresponding production from Ortiz. The average is actually skewed up by the fact that only the best and most durable players can maintain a regular spot in the lineup at this age. The sample of hitters still playing into their mid-30s falls from 619 at 33 years old to 244 at 36. Still, it appears no one told this to Ortiz, who has instead improved like a man 10 years his junior over the last few years.

Of course, in the long run, Father Time is still batting 1.000, and no one knows how much longer Ortiz can string this Benjamin Button act out. One thing is for certain: management is going to have a very interesting decision ahead of them this winter. If he keeps up this level of production, there’s no way they can justify giving him a pay cut, but it’s almost as difficult to stomach shelling out 15 million for a 37-year-old slugger in a (mostly) post-steroids baseball landscape. There’s no obvious answer; as the last few years have shown, there really aren’t many good comparables by which we can judge Ortiz. He’s a one of a kind player, and Ben Cherington’s guess as to when he’ll finally lose it is as good as anyone’s.

Boston Dirt Dogs photo illustration

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

Ah, May 15. That day of universal celebration across Red Sox Nation: Josh Beckett's birthday. On this merry occasion, Beckett's mailbox will surely be stuffed with the most fervent wishes of well-being from his legions of adoring fans. And he'll even be returning the favor, toeing the rubber this afternoon against the Seattle Mariners and doubtless delivering a gift of a performance to his supporters -- all 15 of them.

Sarcasm aside, Red Sox fans have unfortunately been led to expect next to nothing from Beckett, given his last few months in the spotlight. He has supplemented subpar performances on the mound by being at the center of nearly all the negative PR currently surrounding the team. For some reason, an ERA hovering around six doesn't put people in a forgiving mood.

But Beckett's struggles on the field shouldn't be attributed to the deteriorating clubhouse environment he has helped to create; plenty of malcontents have been consistently great players, and his attitude doesn't affect the jump on his fastball. What should be more alarming for the Sox is the fading strength of Beckett's 32-year-old right arm.

Beckett's velocity topped out in 2006, his first season with the Red Sox. His fastball averaged 94.7 mph, and he relied on the pitch heavily, throwing it 69 percent of the time. Between '06 and '09, his velocity remained relatively constant, but he began utilizing his peripheral pitches more frequently, throwing his curveball and changeup more often and even mixing in a cut fastball. He was one of the most productive pitchers in baseball over this period, ranking 12th among all hurlers in Wins Above Replacement.

In 2010, Beckett turned 30 -- bad news for any athlete, pitchers included. A study on peak age for pitchers conducted by Tom Tango found that, on average, the number of innings pitched for all pitchers tops out at age 27. Pitchers' value (measured in WAR per game) continues to increase until it crests at age 30, due to the inability of below-average pitchers to remain in the league beyond their mid-20s physical peaks; in other words, only good pitchers are able to stay in the majors into their 30s. Even so, as Tango writes, pitchers "are definitely on the down slope starting at age 30."

Beckett appears to be no exception to this trend. Since turning 30 in May of 2010, he has lost about three MPH off both his fastball and curveball, suggesting his arm just doesn't have the life it once did (all data courtesy of Fangraphs).

Things have only gotten worse in 2012. Beckett has thrown his fastball at 91.5 mph, on average, and he seems to have recognized the relative weakness of the pitch; he has thrown it at a career-low rate of 49.7 percent during the young season. To compensate, Beckett has added a much higher proportion of cutters and changeups, which seems to be a sensible adjustment for an older pitcher -- except that, so far, it hasn't really worked, as evidenced by the results he's gotten on the field.

Within this context, his mostly exceptional 2011 begins to look more like an aberration. He was the beneficiary of luck and good timing for much of last year; he allowed a career-low .245 BABIP -- which may have had something to do with his new, more deception-based approach -- and stranded a career-best 80 percent of runners he allowed on base.

But it's still too early to pass any definitive judgment. We'll need to see more of a healthy Beckett in 2012 to determine whether the sudden drop in velocity is due to a pesky lat or a significant decrease in ability. Perhaps he can recapture some of the 2011 magic by pitching smarter, not harder.

The bottom line? Beckett will have to reinvent himself a lot more successfully than he's done early in 2012 if he hopes to be in Boston for much longer -- which is itself a pretty big question mark. If he continues to struggle, expect the Red Sox to try to unload him sooner rather than later; Beckett is owed more than $47 million through 2014, and the Sox' books are already bloated with aging, underperforming (or not-at-all performing) pitchers. The party might be over before he knows it.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

The Red Sox front office did everything they could this offseason to make 2012 a fresh start. Out went general manager Theo Epstein and manager Terry Francona, veterans of two World Series-winning teams. The new power structure included additions from inside and out, with Ben Cherington ascending to the role of GM and wild card Bobby Valentine brought in as manager.

So much for shaking things up. The team’s uneven performance in April did little to dispel the discontent surrounding last September’s collapse. In fact, you could be forgiven for confusing the two months; the Sox’ numbers during these two periods were eerily similar.

In September 2011, the Sox ranked among the top five in the majors in batting average, slugging, on-base percentage, hits, and runs scored, scoring ten runs or more five different times. They were well ahead of the Rays, with whom they were competing for the final playoff spot in the AL, in all these categories.

Boston’s bats were again hot this April. Paced by the near-.400 hitting of David Ortiz and pleasant surprises Ryan Sweeney and Mike Aviles, the Sox led the major leagues in runs scored and were second in hits, batting average, and slugging.

The problem, to no one’s surprise, was pitching. As has been well documented, the Red Sox staff sported a league-worst 5.84 ERA last September, highlighted by the starting rotation’s 7.08 ERA. In April, the Sox ranked second-to-last with a 5.54 ERA, slightly ahead of the hapless Minnesota Twins.

This time, the bullpen was the weak link. Led by new acquisition Mark Melancon’s rancid 49.50 ERA, Red Sox relief pitchers set the standard for futility in the young season with a collective 6.10 ERA, worst in the majors.

Obviously, the team has struggled to deal with the loss of new closer Andrew Bailey, and he’ll presumably bring some stability to the unit when he returns around the All-Star break.

But, if April is any indication, the Sox face an even more daunting divisional battle than last season. In case you didn’t notice, Boston currently sits last in the AL East, despite finishing April with seven wins in eight games. Now, whether Baltimore and Toronto can continue to mount serious playoff bids is questionable, but they can no longer be considered doormats. If the Red Sox hope to seriously contend this year, they will need a major improvement in the contributions of…well, just about every pitcher on the staff.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

Predictably, the Red Sox’ uneven start to the season brought with it more than its fair share of hand wringing. That’s understandable, given the way the beginning and end of last year played out, but there was still an amazing outpouring of angst over five or six games out of 162. Lest we forget, in 2011, the Sox rebounded from an 11-15 April, which included a season-opening 2-10 stretch to ascend temporarily to the top of the American League in August. A midseason turnaround like that leads me to wonder: how much does the first month of the season matter toward determining a team’s final record?

To investigate the question, I examined the April records of all 30 MLB teams for the past five seasons (resulting in 150 "seasons" in all), then matched them up with the teams’ records at the end of the season. The resulting plot is shown below. Each MLB team has five points on the plot (one for each of the past five seasons), each representing the April winning percentage and end-of-season winning percentage for a single season. I also included a line drawn through the points to describe the average trend of the data.

After performing a simple linear regression, I found that a team’s record in April was highly statistically significant in predicting that same team’s record at the end of the year. The R-squared in the model—a statistical measure that describes how well the fluctuations of the response variable (in this case, end-of-season winning percentage) are described by the corresponding changes in the explanatory variable (winning percentage in April)— was 0.257. This means that 25.7 percent of the variation in end-of-season winning percentage can be explained by teams’ April winning percentage.

It’s an interesting finding, since the average team played 26 games in April, or only 16.0 percent of its 162-game schedule. This implies that games in April mean more to a team’s ultimate regular season fate than what the simple win-loss record at the end of the month tells us. Under this reasoning, the first month of the season is worth the equivalent of 42 games in determining a team’s final October record.

A closer analysis of the data also reveals a few tidbits of interest. As illustrated in the graph, only one team (the 2009 Colorado Rockies) with a winning percentage of 0.400 or lower in April finished the season with a winning record. Similarly, of the 28 teams that won 60 percent or more of their games in April, 23 ended their years above .500.

Though the difference between a winning percentage of .400 and .600 in April is only about five games in the standings—a gap that could seemingly be overturned without too much difficulty over the course of the next 136 games—it’s a disparity that, in practice, is rarely surmounted.

I also tested whether a team’s Pythagorean expectation—its expected winning percentage based purely on the differential between total runs scored and total runs allowed—was a better predictor of final winning percentage. From season to season, Pythagorean expectation has been shown to forecast a team’s win-loss record better than the win-loss records from previous years, so I thought a team’s Pythagorean expected winning percentage in April might also correlate more strongly with end-of-season winning percentage. This method did slightly better than the previous one (R-squared = 0.266), but not enough to be a practically significant improvement.

Clearly, the first few weeks of the MLB season provide a limited amount of information about a team and its players — Chris Shelton, anyone? — but it appears they tell us more than we might initially think. A number of theories might be proposed to explain this phenomenon; for instance, it could be that a team’s early season start is important to establishing the clubhouse mentality that will prevail the rest of the season, creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Or perhaps, near the end of the year, when playoff berths are cemented and teams are eliminated from contention, the games matter less and thus aren’t as predictive of a team’s final record.

However, one thing is evident: April is not just any other month. The rates at which teams burst out of spring training into the regular season have effects that last throughout the rest of the year. Someone might want to mention this to Bobby Valentine; something tells me questioning the heart of one of your scrappiest players doesn’t really galvanize the guys into action.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

Below is part two of the Red Sox statistical preview, which focuses on the pitching staff. All numbers are from Baseball Think Factory's 2012 ZiPS projections. Part one can be found here.

Jon Lester
16-8, 3.46 ERA, 30 GS, 187.1 IP, 163 H, 72 ER, 18 HR, 74 BB, 186 SO

Lester figures to be the ace of the staff, and he’s earned it, with four consecutive All-Star caliber seasons. The Sox would be pretty disappointed to get numbers much worse than these out of Lester, and they’d probably like to see him top 200 innings. The only red flag is the drop in his strikeout numbers last year—he got fewer swings and misses, and, according to PITCHf/x data, lost about one mile per hour on his fastball.

Josh Beckett
10-6, 3.80 ERA, 25 GS, 154.0 IP, 144 H, 65 ER, 19 HR, 47 BB, 133 SO

Lost in all the rending of garments surrounding the events of last September was the fact that 2011 was one of Beckett’s best seasons, the first one in which he held a sub-three ERA. Still, ZiPS expects a bit of a decline, justified by Beckett’s career-low .249 BABIP, which is 44 points below his career average. However, the thumb injury is somewhat worrisome. This shallow rotation can’t afford a loss of one of its mainstays for any significant period of time.

Clay Buchholz
10-5, 3.63 ERA, 20 GS, 116.2 IP, 109 H, 47 ER, 11 HR, 45 BB, 83 SO

Speaking of pitchers the Sox can’t afford to lose, the rotation simply must have Buchholz healthy for most of the year. This projection factors in the concerns about his durability, predicting he’ll start just 20 games. When active, though, he has the potential to be one of the best No. 3 starters in the game, which would be invaluable for a team that rounds out its rotation with none other than …

Felix Doubront
Daniel Bard

The grand experiment: can Bard, an ace reliever, and Doubront, a late-season call-up, really hold down the back end of the Boston rotation? Their ZiPS projections aren't really applicable, as Bard is assuming an entirely different role and Doubront has only 35.1 career innings under his belt.

As starters, both pitchers have a spotty history in the minors. Bard never pitched above Class A, and he ended 2007, his first and last season as a starter, with an ignominious 7.08 ERA in 22 starts. Doubront fared slightly better, rising all the way up to AAA Pawtucket, but he sported a less-than-stellar 4.22 ERA in his 18 appearances with the PawSox, 16 of them starts. Valentine has expressed faith in Bard's ability to adapt to the rotation, but for a general idea of how well relievers make the transition to the starting rotation, check out this piece by Grantland's Jonah Keri. In general, it’s not pretty. Stay tuned.

Andrew Bailey
4-1, 3.04 ERA, 52 G, 53.1 IP, 45 H, 18 ER, 4 HR, 16 BB, 53 SO

Toss these projections out the window. Bailey will be sidelined until at least the All-Star break as he recovers from thumb surgery.

Alfredo Aceves
6-3, 3.76 ERA, 40 G, 79.0 IP, 75 H, 33 ER, 7 HR, 31 BB, 52 SO

Well, here’s your Opening Day closer. For as lights out as Aceves was last year—2.61 ERA in 114.0 innings pitched—his peripheral pitching numbers are a little shaky. His 1.90 strikeout-to-walk ratio was second lowest on the team among pitchers with more than 50 innings pitched. Compare that to Jonathan Papelbon, the prototypical high-strikeout, low-walk closer, whose 8.70 SO/BB ratio was tops in the major leagues among closers, and start firing up those defibrillators—the ninth is going to be a little more stressful this year.

Mark Melancon
5-3, 3.59 ERA, 52 G, 57.2 IP, 54 H, 23 ER, 5 HR, 20 BB, 48 SO

There’s a reasonable case to be made that Melancon should, in fact, take over the role of closer until Bailey returns. He had more strikeouts and fewer walks per nine innings than Aceves last year, and a much less troubling BABIP (.290 to Aceves’ .233). If Aceves struggles early on, I doubt Bobby Valentine will have much problem promoting Melancon to ninth-inning work.

Daisuke Matsuzaka
5-4, 4.37 ERA, 14 GS, 80.1 IP, 75 H, 39 ER, 8 HR, 40 BB, 66 SO

Maybe Bobby V. can speak Japanese, but if he brings about any sort of resurgence from Matsuzaka, count me as a believer. Don’t expect too much from Dice when he returns mid-season. He’ll be an improvement on Tim Wakefield as a spot starter, but anything beyond that is an unexpected bonus.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

In February, Baseball Think Factory released its annual ZiPS player projections for 2012, computer-based forecasts compiled using players’ past few seasons of performance and playing time, league factors, and the effects of aging. Below is a look at the ZiPS projections for players who will figure most prominently in the Red Sox offense, along with some brief commentary on each.

Adrian Gonzalez
.297/.384/.526, 153 G, 582 AB, 88 R, 173 H, 36 2B, 31 HR, 104 RBI, 79 BB

After a resoundingly successful first season in Boston, Gonzalez is due for a bit of a regression. His .338 batting average last season, a career high by 34 points, was inflated by a .380 BABIP, tied with Matt Kemp for the highest in the majors among those who qualified for the batting title. Still, that projected line is good enough to put him among the top three-hitters in the American League.

Kevin Youkilis
.268/.374/.477, 116 G, 421 AB, 63 R, 113 H, 28 2B, 18 HR, 67 RBI, 62 BB

Who remembers that Youk was an All-Star last year? With an injury-prone .199/.314/.346 line after the break, you could be excused for forgetting. Given how much time he’s missed the last two seasons, ZiPS projects him to play in only 116 games, depressing his raw numbers significantly. I’m not convinced. Now healthy (and domesticated), I expect Youkilis to get back to what he does best: draw walks and rake.

David Ortiz
.266/.357/.498, 127 G, 462 AB, 61 R, 123 H, 30 2B, 25 HR, 78 RBI, 65 BB

The first-ever article in this space questioned Papi’s ability to sustain his power numbers as he entered his mid- to late-30’s, but after his best offensive season since 2007, Ortiz proved in ’11 that he’s still kicking. However, a word of caution: as noted by Fire Brand of the American League, Ortiz’s numbers last year were boosted by suspiciously good production against lefties. For his career, Ortiz slugs .474 off southpaws (including a miserable .324 in 2010), as compared to .566 last year. That’s a pace he may not be able to continue.

Dustin Pedroia
.294/.368/.461, 139 G, 562 AB, 84 R, 165 H, 36 2B, 18 HR, 70 RBI, 67 BB

Not much new here—look for another characteristically solid year from Pedroia. I’m always curious how Pedroia would fare in another home park; his career slugging percentage is 85 points higher at home (.506) than away (.421), and his batting average also receives a significant boost (.323 home, .287 away). Those lasers off the Green Monster don’t always fall in for hits elsewhere, as evidenced by his 130 career doubles at home, against 76 on the road.

Jacoby Ellsbury
.290/.345/.457, 128 G, 527 AB, 76 R, 153 H, 30 2B, 16 HR, 62 RBI, 40 BB

ZiPS predicts a slight drop-off for Ellsbury offensively, particularly in his slugging percentage, which rose to a career-high .552 last season. It makes sense, given that Ellsbury had hit only 20 home runs in 1,513 plate appearances prior to 2011, in which he hit 32 dingers in 732 trips to the plate. The projection also penalizes him for time missed in 2010 by predicting that he’ll play only 128 games, which may be unfair given his impressive durability in ’09 and ’11.

Carl Crawford
.282/.325/.448, 144 G, 563 AB, 80 R, 159 H, 31 2B, 14 HR, 70 RBI, 34 BB

After Crawford's 2011 campaign, these estimates are awfully optimistic, especially with the news that he’ll be sidelined for the month of April recovering from wrist surgery. He deserves a little benefit of the doubt, though; compared with the rest of his career, last year was such an anomaly that we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from it. I think he’s due for a bounce back season, but he’ll have to improve his plate discipline. His strikeout rate jumped to 19.3 percent from an average of less than 15 percent the previous three years.

Cody Ross
.254/.319/.426, 137 G, 472 AB, 63 R, 120 H, 29 2B, 16 HR, 70 RBI, 40 BB

There isn’t much to say about Cody Ross. If his statistics are any indication, he is an incredibly average baseball player, solid on offense and defense, but not a standout in any regard. He’s had a solid spring training (MLB-leading six home runs), so it’s possible he rekindles his form from 2008-09, in which he hit 22 and 24 homers, respectively. Also, he can juggle.

Ryan Sweeney
.282/.341/.385, 120 G, 379 AB, 53 R, 107 H, 24 2B, 3 HR, 48 RBI, 34 BB

For most of the year, Sweeney should split time with Ross in right field. Ideally, the Red Sox would get a little more power from a corner outfield position than Sweeney offers—he’s hit only two major league home runs in his last two seasons. Don’t expect too many fireworks here, but at least he brings a solid glove.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia
.228/.294/.410, 130 G, 450 AB, 55 R, 103 H, 25 2B, 16 HR, 60 RBI, 38 BB

ZiPS’ initial projection regarded Saltalamacchia as still sharing duties with Jason Varitek, so I adjusted his playing time accordingly, treating Kelly Shoppach as exclusively a backup catcher. It remains to be seen whether Salty’s career highs in power numbers last year are anomalies or indicative of a real increase in slugging ability. He might also have to fend off potential mid-season call-up Ryan Lavarnway for the job, but for fans, that’s a good problem to have.

Mike Aviles
.273/.301/.417, 115 G, 422 AB, 50 R, 115 H, 23 2B, 10 HR, 47 RBI, 17 BB

The Scutaro trade looks more and more puzzling after the way the rest of the offseason unfolded—so, when’s Roy Oswalt signing again?—but Aviles should be a decent stand-in until Jose Iglesias is ready for the majors. If he’s able to produce these type of numbers, he’ll be a more than serviceable bottom of the order hitter, though it would be nice to see him draw a few more walks.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

In his first offseason as Red Sox general manager, Ben Cherington cannot seem to escape the steady chorus of whispers that follow his every move. How could we lose Pap? What do we want with Nick Punto? But his latest transaction — trading Marco Scutaro to the Rockies for reliever Clayton Mortensen — has amplified those whispers to a dull roar.

The Sox are acting cheap.

The deal was a thinly veiled salary dump, designed to allow for some breathing room under the luxury tax threshold (which they will inevitably cross anyway) after signing new outfielder Cody Ross and potentially a starting pitcher, like Roy Oswalt or Edwin Jackson.

But is this necessarily a bad thing? As other American League teams stock up on big-name free agents, fans might argue that it certainly appears that way. The Red Sox cannot afford to stand pat with essentially the same group of players that just missed the playoffs, especially in the AL East, and especially after the way last season ended. After all, they’ve blown heaps of money on players that didn’t pan out, so shouldn’t the Sox make a meaningful investment in a proven performer, as the Tigers and Angels have done?

That depends on the reasoning behind this newfound thriftiness. If the Red Sox are shying away from this year’s free agent market due to the Ghosts of Contracts Past — most notably, J.D. Drew, John Lackey, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and, at least for 2011, Carl Crawford — then I totally disagree with their current course. This line of thought disregards entirely the economic concept of sunk costs. However painful their memories may be, the inflated contracts on the Sox’ books are in the past (“sunk”), and the money already committed cannot be recovered. Lackey will get paid all 82 of his millions, and yes, Drew did just take 70 million more where that came from.

So how should the specter of these underperforming deals affect the ones the Red Sox negotiate in the present? Answer: not one bit. When determining the worth of a business investment, a rational actor weighs only the future costs and benefits that the investment will yield; it doesn’t make sense to allow something unrelated to that investment to influence one’s best choice. If, after careful evaluation, the benefits a player is expected to bring to the team outweigh the costs of signing him, he should be signed.

But if the Red Sox do indeed aspire to be rational actors, which I believe to be the case, this newfound thrift is an encouraging sign; it simply means they view this year’s free agent crop as either not suited to their needs or, more likely, wildly overpriced. Some have taken the Red Sox’ inaction as an indication that they’re being passed by in the American League arms race. So be it. Of the high-profile deals negotiated this offseason — Yu Darvish, C.J. Wilson, Albert Pujols, and Prince Fielder come to mind — my guess is that none of them will deliver even close to a fair return on their lengthy, bloated contracts (winner’s curse, anyone?). As Peter Abraham noted on Twitter, Adrian Gonzalez’s contract (7 years, $154 million) “looks better every day”.

Now, the grumblings that the Red Sox, worth $912 million as valued by Forbes, are behaving more like the tight-fisted Oakland A’s (team value: $307 million) certainly merit some consideration. By all rights, the Sox should outspend most other teams, as they have the financial resources to do so. It’s just not good business to do so every offseason. As you’ll recall, the Red Sox were proclaimed the overwhelming winners of last year’s Hot Stove, and as you’ll also recall, that meant nothing at the end of September. Uncertainty and luck are integral parts of baseball, and neither of them can be spent away. The Red Sox passed on C.J. Wilson not because of recurring Lackey nightmares, but rather their visions of a 31-year-old fragile pitcher collecting paycheck after paycheck on the disabled list.

Personally, I don’t mind that John Henry has stipulated a “budget” for the team, the bounds of which Cherington must respect (for now). Perhaps he understands that the team slated to take the field in April is largely the same as the one picked by 45 of 45 ESPN pundits to win the division in 2011, the one that possessed the best record in the American League into the last month of the season, and the one that led the league in offense despite severely limiting injuries to Kevin Youkilis and the disappointing debut season of Carl Crawford. Viewed from the preseason, this team’s chances to win the World Series are as good as anyone’s, and none of this year’s free agents would have boosted them enough to justify the expense required to land them.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

A week ago, it was announced that David Ortiz had accepted arbitration and would return to the Red Sox for at least the 2012 season. Though it seemed unlikely he would land anywhere but Boston, the other candidate discussed as in the running to enlist Big Papi’s services was (gasp) the New York Yankees. Former teammate Johnny Damon even suggested as much to Ortiz at his charity golf outing; with the friendlier dimensions of Yankee Stadium, Damon speculated, “[Ortiz’s] 30 home runs turns into 40.”

Obviously, the point is now moot. We’ll never know how Ortiz’s season would have turned out had he migrated to the Bronx. But Damon’s prediction raises an interesting question: just how strong of an effect can a ballpark have on a player’s numbers?

To start, let’s set down a few basic assumptions. The first one –– that, in a Boston uniform, Ortiz would hit 30 homers in 2012 –– is not trivial. As I’ve written before, the 36-year-old Ortiz is now at the age when we’d expect to see some drop-off in his overall offensive output. Of course, we would also have anticipated such a decline in each of his last three seasons, yet his home run and slugging totals have remained remarkably consistent.

Fortunately, his most marketable talent, power, is, as Bill James termed it, an “old player skill” –– it deteriorates at a slower rate than abilities like speed and batting average. Given a comparable level of power in ’12, then, it seems fair to anticipate 30 home runs from Ortiz as a Red Sox, but don’t be surprised if it’s accompanied by a dip in his batting average back into the .270 - .275 range.

If we assume his physical decline will have a negligible effect on his power, the change in his output would come primarily from a new hitting environment: in this case, Yankee Stadium.

One way to account for the effect of a ballpark on a player’s numbers is to adjust them with park factors. A park factor measures how much a given ballpark differs in some statistic (runs, home runs, doubles) from a league-average ballpark for that same statistic. This theoretical league-average ballpark is taken to have a park factor of 100. A park at which 10 percent more runs are scored than at the league-average park would have a score of 110. The same pattern holds for parks that are less hitter-friendly. A park factor of 90 for runs scored means that teams score 10 percent fewer runs than they would at a league-average ballpark.

In their simplest form, park factors (for runs scored, let’s say) are calculated for each ballpark as simply the ratio of total runs scored/home game to total runs scored/away game, multiplied by 100. This explains why the league-average ballpark has a park factor of 100; an equal number of runs are scored in home games as in away games (the ratio above equals one). Yearly park factors can be subject to large fluctuations as a result of random variation in players’ performances –– for instance, Fenway’s run-scoring park factor rose from 108 to 117 between 2010 and 2011 –– so park factors are generally calculated over periods of multiple years.

As a hypothetical member of the 2012 Yankees, all Ortiz’s plate appearances at Fenway would instead come at Yankee Stadium, and vice versa. To translate his production from one ballpark to the other, I’ll apply each one’s home run park factor to Ortiz’s expected production, using only the change in home at-bats.

First, we’ll have to categorize Ortiz’s home runs by direction. Here’s the breakdown of each of his 89 home runs the last three seasons, provided by ESPN Stats and Information.

2009

2010

2011

LF (135 – 118): 5 HR (5.6 percent)
LCF (117 – 100): 10 HR (11.2 percent)
CF (99 – 82): 17 HR (19.1 percent)
RCF (81 – 64): 28 HR (31.5 percent)
RF (63 – 45): 29 HR (32.6 percent)

Below are the home run park factors for both Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, calculated by the Hardball Times with a more precise methodology than the one I outlined above.

Yankee Stadium: LF – 115, LCF – 100, CF – 72, RCF – 128, RF – 134
Fenway Park: LF – 105, LCF – 106, CF – 57, RCF – 94, RF – 88

Using the previous analysis of his home runs by direction, I can now project the number of home runs Ortiz would hit to each field in 2012, as a member of the Red Sox and, after accounting for park factors, as a hypothetical member of the Yankees (rounded to the nearest home run). The final assumptions: Ortiz has the same number of home plate appearances in each scenario, and the away parks at which he plays have a mean park factor of 100.

Home park: Fenway Park

LF: 2 HR
LCF: 3 HR
CF: 6 HR
RCF: 9 HR
RF: 10 HR

Total: 30 HR

Home park: Yankee Stadium

LF: 2 HR
LCF: 3 HR
CF: 7 HR
RCF: 11 HR
RF: 12 HR

Total: 35 HR

Damon’s offhand projection looks too extreme; while Yankee Stadium would inflate Big Papi’s home run total, it would not do so to the degree he hypothesized. Overall, the short porch would add only three to four home runs to Ortiz’s expected total.

The study might be improved with access to the data for all of Ortiz’s fly balls, which could tell us empirically how many of his warning track shots would leave the yard when adjusted for the dimensions of a different park. Unfortunately, that data is not readily (or cheaply) available.

How important are park factors? Had Ortiz averaged 35 home runs instead of 30 in each of the last three years, his case for a multi-year contract would look a lot more compelling. You can bet the Red Sox studied park factors when pursuing Adrian Gonzalez last winter; they recognized that, playing in the offensive dead zone of Petco Park, his numbers were artificially deflated –– for proof, check out his home and away splits in 2010. In both cases, the discrepancy has nothing to do with ability, but the setting in which that ability is placed. And in a marketplace in which 10 points of batting average or five home runs can mean a difference of millions of dollars in salary, it’s important to have the most accurate information possible.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

With their managerial search finally concluded, the Red Sox’ focus now shifts to filling holes in the roster through free agency, shoring up the pitching staff and adding a right fielder, ideally. Their limited needs suggest that the team will be relatively minor players this offseason, out of the market for free agency’s biggest prizes -- Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder, namely, now that shortstop Jose Reyes has signed with Miami. That may be a good thing; the teams that do ultimately land these players could very well be afflicted with the winner’s curse.

The winner’s curse is derived from a piece of auction theory, which states that, in a sealed-bid auction -- when each party knows only his or her own bid -- the winner will almost always overpay. The term originated in the 1950s, when competing oil companies placed bids on offshore drilling properties, according to their own independent appraisals. The only way the winning bidder -- the party that valued the oil field the highest -- received fair value on his investment was if every other bidder underestimated the oil field’s value. And as, in most cases, the median bids were closer to the property’s true value than bids at either extreme, companies virtually had to overpay if they were to own the oil field.

When wading into the free agent market, baseball teams are particularly vulnerable to the winner’s curse for a couple of reasons. First, the market for baseball players works much like the market in the oil example: each team must make its own independent assessment of a player’s future worth, something that’s incredibly difficult to predict with any certainty. Teams also have limited access to the estimates of their fellow bidders. To be sure of signing a player, they must make an offer that they anticipate will top anything tendered by the competition. And with many other prospective buyers contending for the same scarce supply of players, teams know they may have to venture outside their price range and pay a premium to stay in the race for these players’ services.

Secondly, and more dangerously, teams mistakenly pay for players’ pasts, and not their futures. Many top-notch baseball players’ best years are already behind them by the time they sign lucrative free-agent contracts. The average age of the 2011 free agent class is 33.8; by contrast, the average MLB player hits the peak of his prime at age 27. Even first-time free agents are required to have logged six seasons of big-league service -- generally, that includes the crucial 26-29 year-old period, in which a ballplayer realizes his potential to the fullest extent.

Exacerbating the problem is that, for a team to place the winning bid on a coveted free agent, it has to make a long-term commitment: four to six years, in many cases. Even if a player’s production exceeds expectations during the first couple years of his contract, it’s very difficult to obtain good value over the duration of the deal. Just ask Yankees management whether A-Rod’s been worth $65 million the last two seasons.

The way to beat the winner’s curse is, first of all, to acknowledge its existence. When teams recognize how often these bad contracts are given out, they should -- assuming they are rational actors -- fine-tune their methods of player evaluation and steer clear of long term deals to aging players. Eventually, free agent contracts would begin to more accurately reflect the underlying value of the signing players. Yet the winner’s curse is not a totally foreign idea; Baseball Prospectus covered the phenomenon as far back as 2002. And, as recent history indicates, MLB teams have learned just about zilch.

A look at free agent contracts soon to be or just recently completed can provide some insight into the pitfalls of the winner’s curse. From 2006 to 2009, 20 players signed deals worth over $50 million -- an arbitrarily chosen threshold, admittedly, but one that, in all cases, represents an expensive, multi-year agreement. (Note: included among these were contract extensions, which, as a form of long-term commitment to an established star, work essentially the same as free agent contracts for my purposes.)

The list below is enough to make any GM entering this week’s winter meetings think twice about opening his wallet. As measured by WAR, only seven players of those 20 ever recorded even one season as productive as the one immediately preceding their new deal: Cliff Lee, Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Gil Meche, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Torii Hunter, and Matt Holliday; and only four -- Lee, Ramirez, Meche, and Hunter -- had more than one such season. On the other hand, flops like Barry Zito, Gary Matthews, John Lackey, and Aaron Rowand testify both to the difficulties inherent in projecting players’ futures and the dangerously large financial commitments necessary to sign them.

The next few weeks may well provide a few additional candidates for this list. José Reyes can’t stay healthy for a full season at age 28; imagine what his legs will be like at 33. Prince Fielder compares all too favorably with a certain other doughy, salary-guzzling slugger with whom you might be familiar. And even if Albert Pujols is the next Hank Aaron, it’s hard to justify committing $20-25 million to any 38-year-old.

It’s probably for the best that these players aren’t on the Sox’ wish list. Instead, Ben Cherington, Larry Lucchino, and crew will be content to remain secondary buyers, filling the few weaknesses in a still potent roster and avoiding the potential hex of the winner’s curse. After all, the Red Sox don’t need any reminding just how quickly this curse can strike.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

Joining the exodus from Fenway Park this offseason is another high-profile name, Jonathan Papelbon, who signed a four-year, $50 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. Much ink has already been spilled lamenting the loss of such a visible and effective cog in the Red Sox organization, and it is indeed a shame to lose a player who has consistently excelled in his role, as Pap has for the last six seasons. But if the Phillies were willing to throw that much money at him, by all means, let him walk. Paying Papelbon $50 million is just not good business.

In economics, when two commodities provide the same amount of utility, or level of relative satisfaction, the rational consumer makes his decision solely by examining the goods’ respective prices. Each good delivers the same end result, so the consumer acting out of self-interest will minimize his costs and choose the cheaper option.

The Red Sox already have a readily available substitute for Papelbon in Daniel Bard. Now, Bard may not be a perfect substitute for Papelbon –– exactly replacing his production –– but over the span of his young career, he’s been awfully close.

Jonathan Papelbon (2009-11)
194 G, 2.89 ERA, 199.1 IP, 10.79 SO/9, 0.7 HR/9, 3.85 SO/BB
Salary earned: $27,600,000

Daniel Bard (2009-11)
192 G, 2.88 ERA, 197.0 IP, 9.7 SO/9, 0.7 HR/9, 2.80 SO/BB
Salary earned: $1,199,189

Any advantage Papelbon maintains by his “big-game experience” or other intangible assets doesn’t justify an expenditure ten to 20 times greater, especially when that money could be allocated more efficiently to meet other, more pressing needs: a starting pitcher or a right fielder, for instance.

The gap in salary will only widen in the coming years, as the Phillies shower Papelbon, already in his 30s, with the riches of his new contract. The discrepancy in their performance, however, will not. In 26-year-old Bard, the Red Sox can give a pitcher in the midst of his prime the opportunity he deserves at an eminently affordable price. We’ll see if Papelbon can preserve the value of the Phillies’ investment when he loses a few miles per hour on his heater.

Admittedly, removing Bard from the set-up role leaves a void in an already suspect bullpen, particularly if Alfredo Aceves moves into the starting rotation. But adding lesser-known free agent relievers for the 7th and 8th innings is much more cost-effective than signing Heath Bell, former Phillies closer Ryan Madson, or any other big-name free agent closer. It certainly won’t cost $12.5 million per year.

In at least one respect, Papelbon is the gift that keeps on giving: pending the results of ongoing labor negotiations, his departure will likely provide the Sox with a compensatory first-round draft pick, valued at roughly $5-6 million, according to The Hardball Times. It could even yield the closer of the future: both Papelbon and Bard entered the league as early-round draft selections of the Red Sox.

In shipping down to Philadelphia, Papelbon himself proved to be a rational decision-maker: he took the money and split. Given that he didn’t bother negotiating with the Red Sox, it’s clear he wasn’t deriving much utility any longer from his time at Fenway. As for Sox fans, take heart: your team made a smart financial decision, though you may have thought it wasn’t possible. We’ll see how long the trend continues, but with his first major personnel change, new GM Ben Cherington may be setting the tone for his tenure at the helm of the Red Sox: strictly business.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

There appear to be two well-defined positions staked out in Red Sox Nation concerning recently departed General Manager Theo Epstein: either you think he’s the genius responsible for two World Series championships, or the lucky S.O.B. who free-rode to success on the strength of former GM Dan Duquette’s shrewd moves and a seemingly bottomless budget.

For the beginning of Epstein’s tenure, this is a legitimate debate. Many of the core players involved in the playoff runs of 2003 and 2004, Epstein’s first two years on the job, were in place before his arrival, most prominently Manny Ramirez, Jason Varitek, Pedro Martinez, and Johnny Damon. Yet Epstein alone was responsible for the additions of David Ortiz and Curt Schilling, perhaps the two most heroic members of the ’04 team.

Using FanGraphs’ Wins Above Replacement (WAR) to measure hitters and pitchers on the same scale, let’s examine which GM’s signings provided greater production to the World Champion ’04 team. To isolate the primary contributors, I limited the study to hitters who played in over 50 games and pitchers who appeared in over 20 games.

Epstein had quite a bit of help in designing the ’04 team; Duquette’s stamp can be found all throughout the roster. In fact, according to the numbers, the curse-breaking title actually belongs more to Duquette than to Theo, though they do not factor in the postseason exploits of Ortiz and Schilling.

Three years later, the Sox brought home another World Series with a team that looked substantially different. Here’s how the credit for the assembly of the 2007 team should be assigned.

Though a few players from the Duquette era were still making significant contributions in ’07 – Ramirez, Youkilis, Varitek, and Wakefield – the team was essentially Epstein’s creation. Gone were Damon and Pedro, replaced by the likes of Daisuke Matsuzaka – who was quite effective in his first couple of seasons, lest you forget – and Dustin Pedroia. The calculation doesn’t even account for the influence of Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett, whose acquisition was negotiated during Epstein’s brief absence in 2005. It seems likely that he played some role in identifying them as desirable pickups while he was still in place.

But was it Theo or the money that brought these pieces of the puzzle to Boston? Epstein’s critics cite the middling to poor return on investment delivered by some of his high-profile signings – Dice-K, John Lackey, and J.D. Drew, for instance – as evidence that the Red Sox will be better off without him. Matt Millen could build a successful baseball team, they argue, with the type of cash Epstein has to throw around. To illustrate this point, here’s how the Red Sox payroll compares with the mean MLB payroll in each year of the Duquette and Epstein eras.

There’s no doubt John Henry’s deep pockets aided Epstein in his tenure in Boston, allowing him to pursue players who were beyond the financial scope of most teams. Any other owner not named Steinbrenner would have laughed him out of the room if asked for $50 million just to talk to a player. But as the Mets, or Epstein’s new team, the Cubs, have shown in the past, a bloated payroll doesn’t automatically translate into a playoff contender. The money has to be spent on the right people, and more often than not, Epstein’s shown an ability to pick them out. This season, the Sox had Pedroia, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Jed Lowrie under contract for a combined $14.9 million, an incredibly favorable figure. Ellsbury alone was worth that sum and more.

In case you’re still not convinced about Epstein’s knack for player evaluation, take a look at the players drafted under his watch: Jonathan Papelbon, Pedroia, David Murphy, Ellsbury, Buchholz, Lowrie, Daniel Bard, Justin Masterson, Ryan Kalish, and Josh Reddick. All these players have either made contributions to the big league squad already or served as trade pieces to acquire more immediate needs.

Of course, every GM makes mistakes. When given the type of money that Epstein had with which to work, those mistakes tend to get magnified. A miss on a $4 million/year contract doesn’t look quite as bad as Lackey’s $16 million/year.

Yet if the ultimate measure of job performance in baseball is delivering a World Series title, Epstein is without a doubt the best GM the Sox have ever had. Even if you take the ’04 title off his résumé, he’s still got one more world championship than anyone pulling the strings since Harry Frazee. He assembled as many playoff teams as his two predecessors, Duquette and Lou Gorman, combined.

This wasn’t the way he deserved to leave town, rushing out the back door of a burning building. It’s a shame that someone who’s brought so much to this franchise is leaving without so much as a “Wait a minute…” from management. For the Red Sox sake, let’s hope the structure and methods he put in place – yes, even “Carmine” – are strong enough to keep producing teams of the quality he put on the diamond.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

There’s no sport in which numbers and statistics matter more than baseball. Virtually every action a player performs on the diamond is recorded, crunched, and spit out; in aggregate, this set of statistics constitutes much of a player’s on-field identity. What's been accomplished in the past gives us an expectation of the future.

But sports have a funny way of reminding us that, at their base, they are activities carried out by humans, not computers; and those humans are subject to very human failures and emotions. Like panic, for instance.

On Sept. 3, a Red Sox win over the Rangers boosted their record to 84-54. They held a 9-game lead on the Rays in the wild card and trailed the Yankees by a half game in the AL East. That day, coolstandings.com assigned them a 99.6 percent chance of making the playoffs, the highest point they would reach all season.

Allowing for some regression to the mean, their expected winning percentage for the rest of the season, according to Baseball Prospectus, was .576, which would have brought them to a 98-63 record entering their Sept. 28 meeting with the Orioles. Instead, the Red Sox stood at 90-71. They had gone 6-17 since their playoff odds peak; given their winning percentage to that point, we would expect that poor of a stretch to occur about 0.2 percent of the time.

We all saw what unfolded. The rotation collapsed like a tent in a hurricane – the starters’ ERA in September was a preposterous 7.08, the highest total in a month in franchise history, and they averaged a mere 4.2 innings per start. The overworked bullpen coughed up a number of leads, led by Daniel Bard and his 10.64 September ERA. The defense didn’t help – over one stretch, the Sox committed 16 errors in 11 games.

All this led to the series of unholy improbables that converged Wednesday night. Trailing 7-0 in the bottom of the eighth, the Rays' chances of victory stood at 0.3 percent. In the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and nobody on, the Red Sox held a 95.3 chance of winning. They were 77-0 in games in which they led after the eighth inning. Down to their last out in the ninth, the Rays trotted out a guy batting .108.

You know the rest.

Since the first modern World Series in 1903, 386 teams have attained a 99 percent chance or greater of making the playoffs. The Red Sox now hold the ignominious distinction as the sixth team in this group to miss the postseason.

Call it lack of chemistry, call it fate, call it whatever you want; I’ll call it human error. Statistics would never have predicted a sequence of events like the ones of September.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

A few weeks ago, I argued that Curtis Granderson had been a more valuable player than Jacoby Ellsbury this season, using the “raw production” definition of value. Based solely on the numbers – and taking into account the error present in one-year samples of advanced fielding data – Granderson appeared to be the superior candidate.

The problem, when it comes to the real MVP balloting, is that there is no single definition of “value” to which all voters subscribe. Some require that the Most Valuable Player be on a playoff team; some refuse to vote for a pitcher; some cling to traditional stats, others to sabermetrics; and some remember a player’s “MVP moments,” like Ellsbury’s 14th-inning home run against the Yankees on Sunday, or Justin Verlander’s no-hitter in April.

Inevitably, some form of all these arguments circulates around this time of year, as writers provide their justification for the manner in which they will ultimately vote. To differentiate this from the other 1,000 MVP-related columns you’ve read over the last month, I decided to present a few, more unique approaches to determining the Most Valuable Player. In each case, I’ll use the seven players who will garner the vast majority of AL MVP votes: Ellsbury, Verlander, Granderson, Adrian Gonzalez, Dustin Pedroia, Miguel Cabrera, and Jose Bautista. I’ll also be leaning heavily on WAR (Wins Above Replacement, from Baseball-Reference) as the most accessible method of comparing hitters and pitchers.

One way to look at a player’s value is to consider where a team would be with a readily available replacement – brought on to the roster from the waiver wire or Triple-A –substituted in place of that player. If we subtract a player’s WAR (the wins he’s produced) from his team’s record, what would his team’s position in the standings look like?

At the beginning of September, this was the primary argument made in support of Verlander’s MVP case. The Tigers’ narrow lead in the AL Central, his proponents said, would instead be a sizable deficit without his contribution. After Detroit’s subsequent 12-game winning streak, this reasoning doesn’t carry the same weight; the rest of the team might have carried the Tigers to first place anyway. In fact, now this argument applies much more appropriately to the Red Sox under consideration, favoring Ellsbury the most.

What about the clutch factor? A player’s ability to come through when it matters most seems like a solid indication of his value to his team. For this measure, I’ll use Win Probability Added (WPA), a statistic that sums a player’s positive and negative contributions to the odds that his team wins a particular game over the course of a season. To put it in simpler terms, the home team might have a 70 percent chance of winning a tie game in the bottom of the ninth, with a man on first and nobody out. A walk-off hit, in this scenario, gives the hitter .30 WPA (his team’s chances of winning went from 70 percent to 100 percent) and takes .30 WPA away from the pitcher. A season’s worth of these changes in win probability are then added up to give us WPA. Here are the results for 2011.

A more technical definition of value, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged.” In other words, the Most Valuable Player might be considered the one who has produced the most “fair return” for his employers, given his salary – the most bang for their buck. We’ll measure this in dollars paid per WAR; again, this favors the young Ellsbury, a few years shy of his first free-agency bonanza.

This “fair return” could also be defined by a player’s popularity and marketability. To what extent does he generate interest in his team and bring the fans to the ballpark? As a rough measurement of this factor, I looked at the “Best Sellers Rank” of each candidate's Replica Home Jersey (Majestic) on Amazon.com, in the “Sports and Outdoors” category. Not surprisingly, perennial All-Star Miguel Cabrera, the most established superstar on the list, leads the way.

Some of these measurements are obviously more practical than others, but they all provide a broader outline for the term “value” than we’re used to seeing, particularly regarding the MVP voting. Realistically, the award will probably be decided in the next couple of days; if the Sox pull out of their current fiery tailspin, my guess is that Ellsbury will be the winner. His September has been the only thing keeping the Red Sox afloat, a fact that will be fresh in the minds of voters. If they crash and burn, look for either Verlander or Bautista, the most statistically compelling candidates, to take home the hardware.

As for my vote? Sorry, Jacoby – my gut reaction says Verlander. But if you right the ship in the next two days, feel free to prove me wrong when you square off in the ALDS.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

David Ortiz says it’s time to panic. I say, hold on a minute, David.

Your team still holds a three-game advantage over the Tampa Bay Rays in the wild card; that’s one fewer than the distance separating you and the Yankees, in case you forgot. Or have you given up on that race, even with three head-to-head matchups remaining?

Speaking of the Yankees, they may end up easing your current fears. Of the Rays’ 17 remaining games, seven will be played against New York. Seven of your last 16 come against Baltimore— currently 30 games under .500.

No doubt, your starting rotation is cringe-worthy at the moment. Outside of Jon Lester, no one scheduled to take the hill in the next week has an ERA under five. But Josh Beckett could be back by the time Tampa comes to Fenway, and there’s not an offense in the majors capable of carrying substandard pitching the way yours is. You’ve earned John Lackey 12 wins, for crying out loud.

You’re in a funk, you say. You’ve lost nine of your last eleven, while the Rays have won eight of 10. Actually, this could be just as much a source of comfort as a cause for alarm. Simple probabilities indicate that neither team is likely to continue at such a rate for the remainder of the season; that’s just the nature of streaks. Need evidence? You started the season 2-10.

You’ve got a 10-game homestand coming (winning percentage at Fenway: .592), while the Rays will be away for their next 11 (winning percentage on the road: .557).

According to Baseball Prospectus, you’ve got a 97 percent chance of making the playoffs. You’re much more likely to win the division over the Yankees than to lose the wild card to the Rays.

These are hardly reasons to panic, David. The pitching staff is a problem, but it’s one that should be of more concern in October, against the best of the American League, than in September, against the Orioles and Blue Jays, with a 3.5 game lead. As long as the rotation can keep you in games, your best bet is to relax and play baseball. It’s no accident your team has made it this far.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

The American League Most Valuable Player will be determined in the coming weeks, and the Red Sox boast three candidates — Adrian Gonzalez, Dustin Pedroia, and Jacoby Ellsbury — who will receive significant consideration. There’s not much argument that Gonzalez and Pedroia have been the most valuable at their respective positions league-wide, but the same can’t be said for Ellsbury. Is he even the most valuable center fielder in his own division?

The challenger to that label, of course, is the Yankees’ Curtis Granderson. The tutelage of hitting coach Kevin Long appears to have injected new life into his swing, which has shown unprecedented power this season. Let’s see how the two players stack up at the plate.

Jacoby Ellsbury
.313 BA, .371 OBP, .526 SLG, 169 hits, 97 runs, 44 BB, 24 HR, 84 RBI, 85 SO, 36 SB

Curtis Granderson
.273 BA, .375 OBP, .584 SLG, 135 hits, 123 runs, 75 BB, 38 HR, 107 RBI, 144 SO, 24 SB

Offensively, the edge has to go to Granderson. His explosion in power numbers — second in the majors in home runs and fourth in slugging — is a more than favorable tradeoff with his high number of strikeouts. He also draws significantly more walks than Ellsbury, translating into a higher on-base percentage despite a batting average 40 points lower. Though it’s hard to find many flaws in Ellsbury's season thus far, the Red Sox might like their lead-off hitter to sport a walk rate closer to that of Kevin Youkilis than Carl Crawford.

But a look at our old friend Runs Created reveals that the disparity is not as large as might be supposed; Granderson maintains only a slight 111 to 107 advantage. Though Granderson’s homer totals are flashy, Ellsbury has steadily racked up the singles and doubles — more valuable for run creation than his counterpart’s walks — and kept his strikeout levels in check. Factor in the greater threat he poses on the base paths, and the gap between the two begins to look very small indeed.

On the defensive side, things get a bit murkier. Many advanced metrics, like FanGraphs’ Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), rate Ellsbury as the top center fielder in the majors — not too surprising given his exceptional range. Yet by the same measures, Granderson, who made a name as a highlight reel defender in Detroit, ranks as one of the worst. A variety of theories have been proposed to explain this: perhaps fleet-footed left fielder Brett Gardner covers a good chunk of his territory in left-center; he may indeed have lost a step; or advanced defensive statistics are the domain of the occult.

Sabermetricians say stats like UZR are better measured over three-year periods; single-season numbers may be skewed by small sample-size bias. Over their last three full seasons, the numbers still heavily favor Ellsbury — his three-year UZR is 27.3 (runs saved above average), compared to Granderson’s -0.8. Even allowing for a substantial margin of error, it looks like Granderson has regressed from his early days as a Tiger, where his ’05-’07 UZR was a healthy 30.6. Ellsbury has indeed been superior in the field.

It’s this discrepancy that accounts for Ellsbury’s slim lead (6.5 to 5.5) in Wins Above Replacement (WAR), an overall measure of player value that’s gaining increasing importance in the MVP voting. When the defensive component is removed from the statistic, Granderson (5.7) is deemed more valuable than Ellsbury (5.2).

So making a judgment here depends on one’s perception of the respective defensive abilities of Ellsbury and Granderson. Trusting the data, Ellsbury has been better overall; Granderson may make a few Web Gems, but the subtle things, like taking good routes to fly balls, are much more important in a consistently good center fielder. Not that this could ever be said of a certain other well-regarded Yankee defender…

For my part, I believe Granderson’s decline in the field isn’t as drastic as UZR would have us believe. His workload in center has indeed been cut down by the presence of the speedy Gardner, artificially reducing the value of his defense. And to answer those who attribute his high power totals to the short porch in Yankee Stadium, he’s actually produced nearly identical numbers on the road as at home. While Ellsbury has provided virtually everything the Sox can ask for from the lead-off spot, Granderson’s been the more valuable player in 2011.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an angry mob to outrun.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

Tim Wakefield has made a long career out of spectacularly average pitching. Sure, he’s first in Red Sox history in innings pitched and second in both wins and strikeouts, but he’s also the runaway leader in losses (by 43), runs allowed (by 608), home runs allowed (by 201), hits allowed (by 541), and walks (by 226). His place in history has been secured by longevity rather than standout performance.

Here’s a look at the average pitching statistics recorded over the span of Wakefield’s career, adjusted for the years and leagues in which he competed, compared to the production of Wakefield himself.

Average Pitcher, 1992-2011
.500 W-L%, 4.48 ERA, 1.408 WHIP, 6.35 K/9, 3.375 BB/9

Tim Wakefield, 1992-2011
.529 W-L%, 4.40 ERA, 1.348 WHIP, 6.00 K/9, 3.40 BB/9

Yet unless the baseball gods conspire against him, Wakefield will cross the 200-win threshold in the coming weeks, a feat accomplished by only 87 of the over 35,000 players to pitch an inning in the major leagues. History will regard him as one of the strangest of this group. He’ll be the seventh knuckleballer, and he’ll sport the second-highest career ERA of any pitcher with over 100 wins.

How has Wakefield managed to stick around so long and record so many victories with such modest numbers?

The answer lies in part in the manner in which he began his career. Wakefield entered the league in 1992 as a late-July call-up for the pennant-chasing Pirates and made an immediate impact, going 8-1 down the stretch with four complete games and a 2.15 ERA. This was good enough to place him third in the Rookie of the Year voting, though he had been in the majors for just over two months.

First impressions are all-important in baseball. In their 2000 study “Career Trajectories in Baseball," Teddy Schall and Gary Smith at Pomona College found a statistically significant relationship between first-year performance and career length. The rookie year is the hardest to survive, especially for players like Wakefield who lack can’t-miss talent. A productive first season can make the difference between a roster spot the following year and a career spent toiling in the minors.

If his first year had gone as poorly as his next two, a good chunk of which was spent in the minors struggling with severe control issues, he wouldn’t have garnered any interest from teams upon his release from Pittsburgh in early 1995. As it was, the Red Sox snapped him up, and, with some guidance from the Niekro brothers, Wakefield recorded the best season of his career, finishing third for the Cy Young (16-8, 2.95 ERA) -- and effectively cementing his place on the team for years to come.

The other factor underlying Wakefield’s success is simple good fortune; Wakefield has been on good teams, and that’s done wonders for his win totals. The accompanying chart shows Wakefield’s record as measured by traditional wins and losses, and by Baseball Prospectus’ Support-Neutral Wins and Losses, which presents a pitcher’s expected record based on the situation in which he left each start, given league-average bullpen and run support.

Had Wakefield been stuck on middling teams throughout his career, we wouldn’t be talking about history. His 5.2 runs of support per start (MLB average over that span: 4.8) likely earned him an extra 15 to 20 wins, and his ten wins recorded in relief have all come with some offensive help -- his team must have been tied or losing at some point during his appearance in order for him to earn the decision. With lesser teammates, he might still be waiting to breach the 150-win mark.

Wakefield’s value lies in his status as a low-cost innings eater who can shuttle between the rotation and the bullpen with ease. It’s just so happened that the opportunities to step in have been plentiful, and with the help of potent offenses, he’s done a capable job and piled up the W’s.

So yes, let’s celebrate number 200 when it finally comes. Just remember that the real reason we should honor Tim Wakefield is not for his wins, but for his rubber arm, his adaptability, and his steadfast professionalism. The guy showed up for work every day, did what he was told, and lo and behold, the baseball gods smiled upon him to the tune of 199 wins, and counting. And while his numbers will never justify a bust in Cooperstown, Wake and his fluttering, dancing knuckleball won’t soon be forgotten by Red Sox Nation.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

There’s probably not a player on the Red Sox roster who’s inspired more remote control throws and hair-pulling in the Greater Boston area this year than pitcher John Lackey. Yet during the last month, he’s been, well, pretty good, posting a 5-0 record with a 3.58 ERA since July 9. This has been all the more welcome given the loss of Clay Buchholz; more than ever, the Sox now need solid production from the back of their rotation, especially heading into a likely postseason berth.

So which will we get the rest of the season: the newly revitalized Lackey, or the guy who sported a 7-plus ERA before his recent resurgence?

First 13 starts: 5-8, 7.47 ERA, 1.631 WHIP, 1.67 K/BB

Last six starts: 5-0, 3.58 ERA, 1.354 WHIP, 6.2 K/BB

The Promising: The most telling statistics underlying Lackey’s improvement are the increased strikeout numbers and decreased walk rate. These are two of the best indicators for evaluating the true nature of a pitcher’s performance, as they’re two of the stats he can most consistently control. It’s become accepted wisdom in the statistical community that pitchers actually have very limited influence over what happens to a batted ball once it’s put in play; whether a ball falls in for a hit or not generally has more to do with defense and simple chance than a pitcher’s ability.

However, the pitcher’s ability has quite a lot to do with keeping balls from being put in play in the first place (strikeouts) and cheaply putting runners on base (walks), categories in which Lackey has been much more efficient of late.

Lackey’s subpar numbers to this point may also be the result of plain bad luck. As alluded to earlier, a pitcher’s BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) is largely dictated by factors outside his control, but it usually hovers close to the MLB average of about .295. Under this assumption, Lackey’s been extraordinarily unlucky, posting a career high .332 BABIP, which puts him in the 95th percentile for pitchers with over 100 innings this year.

That number can’t be pinned on the defense, either—the Red Sox' staff BABIP is only .281. It’s possible that Lackey’s fortunes could turn. Regression of this number toward the mean, and thus fewer baserunners, would be reflected as a decrease in runs allowed.

The Ominous: A trend that doesn't bode well for Lackey, and can explain much of his poor performance this season, is the rate at which he’s allowed fly balls. Over his career, Lackey has shown a slightly above-average ability to avoid them; from 2004 to 2010, he recorded a mean ground ball-to-fly ball ratio (GB/FB) of 1.24, compared to the MLB average of around 1.10. In 2011, his GB/FB stands at a paltry 0.94.

Why is this a problem? Well, when’s the last time you saw a bouncing ball leave the park (besides on a blooper reel)? Fly balls are more likely to enhance run production; they go for extra base hits far more often than ground balls. And they’re especially dangerous at an offensively inclined park like Fenway. It’s no wonder hitters are slugging .478 off Lackey this year (career average: .408).

Before we attribute too much of Lackey’s struggles to bad luck, note that 22 percent of the balls put in play off Lackey are line drives, the highest number since his rookie season. His pitches may just be sitting nicely on tees for opposing hitters, making his inflated BABIP an indication of decreased effectiveness rather than a pattern of bad breaks. Though he’s allowed fewer fly balls lately (1.03 GB/FB in his last six starts), he’s still been afflicted by a high line drive rate (23 percent) — not the medicine needed to continue his recovery.

The Verdict: The rest of Lackey’s season — whether late-season charge or relapse — will hinge primarily on these key statistics. If he’s able to punch out batters, reduce his free passes, and keep the ball on the ground, the chances are good that he’ll end the season on this current upswing and start to look a bit more like the pitcher signed from Anaheim in 2009.

If not, Sox fans may find themselves replacing yet another set of television accessories.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Correspondent

Few would argue with a characterization of the Red Sox batting order as “top-heavy.” Woe to the Sox, the thinking goes, should any ill befall one or more of their best hitters, as the bats available to replace their extraordinary production appear to range from the cold (looking at you, J.D.) to the cryogenically frozen (too late for a comeback, Ted?). Yet the offense has scored more runs than any other team this season. Can the bottom of the order really be nothing more than dead weight?

To evaluate the fairness of this view, let’s take a look at runs created, a statistic developed by Bill James, father of sabermetrics and senior adviser of baseball operations for the Red Sox. Runs created takes into account virtually every outcome an offensive player can produce on the field -- grounding into a double play, hitting a triple, bunting a runner over, etc. -- to approximate a hitter’s individual contribution to his team’s scoring. The accompanying chart shows what the lineup has produced this season, through Sunday's game.

That amounts to an average of 85.2 runs created from the first five hitters and 51.25 from the 6-9 hitters, or a 40 percent decrease. At first glance, this disparity only confirms the futility of the bottom of the order. But before you pile on Marco Scutaro or Carl Crawford, consider the embarrassment of riches at the top; Adrian Gonzalez, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Dustin Pedroia all rank in the top ten in the majors (third, seventh, and eighth, respectively) in runs created. It’s almost impossible not to look bad by comparison.

The platoon system, the product of injuries and inconsistency, has actually produced some fairly decent results. The median runs created among MLB regulars this season (minimum 350 PA) is 54. Given that the combinations we see at the bottom of the Sox order have about the same number of plate appearances as the regulars at the top, the team still gets reliably average production from the 6-9 holes — a serviceable level with such firepower from the 1-5 spots.

The Mariners and the Astros don’t get those numbers from their best hitters.

There’s no telling when Crawford, the biggest individual drag on the offense not named Drew -- whose 25 runs created are fewer than Reddick’s total in half the plate appearances -- will finally shake his severe case of MCS (Mike Cameron Syndrome) at the plate. Remember, there’s a reason this guy got paid in the offseason; he’s averaged 101 runs created/year over his career, and he’s still in his prime at age 30. If Pedroia or Ellsbury were to go down, he’s capable of earning those checks and picking up the mashing right where they left off.

Let us not waste our breath, then, praying for an exorcism of J.D.’s Louisville Slugger. The offense will be there the rest of the year. Rather, let us direct our pleas for divine intervention toward Clay Buchholz’s back, or Erik Bedard’s knee, lest the increasingly fragile-looking pitching staff shatter any dreams of postseason glory.

By Andrew Mooney, Boston.com Contributor

Though some Red Sox fans may refuse to believe it, there’s an inconvenient truth we can’t ignore much longer: David Ortiz is getting old. Sure, we’ve all heard this refrain before, particularly in 2009 when, at the end of May, he was hitting .185 with exactly one home run.

Just when his transformation into Grand Papi seemed complete, he hit seven homers in each of the next three months, finishing the season with 28. He finished last season with 32 homers after another slow start. And during his 2011 All-Star campaign, his slugging and on-base percentage are hovering around his career averages.

But the uncomfortable fact remains that Ortiz is 35 years old. Historically, this is not a good age for a hitter’s power numbers, as shown in the accompanying graph. Using the simplest and most conventional measure of a slugger’s ability -- the long ball -- it’s clear that power hitters have difficulty maintaining their production levels as the years pass.

Since 1901, 100 players have hit 30-plus home runs in a season more than once beyond the age of 30; Ortiz is one of them, accomplishing the feat three times. However, when we extend the age condition to 35, things become a lot less encouraging. Only 18 players have hit more than 30 dingers in more than one season at or past that age.

When we take a look at some of the names on that list, the picture becomes even bleaker: Bonds, McGwire, Giambi, Sheffield … have we seen these names somewhere before? Eight of the 18 players reached those slugging totals at the heart of the steroid era, between 1996 and 2006, before the federal investigation into performance-enhancing drug use was finally commissioned. So, with the assumption that a slugger’s $12 million annual salary warrants an expectation of 30 home runs a year, Papi will seek to do something in the coming seasons that, arguably, only 10 other (mostly) clean players in history have accomplished. Yikes.

Admittedly, home run total is an imprecise measurement of a power hitter’s contribution to the lineup. Let’s look at slugging percentage -- a slugging percentage of .500 equates roughly to the 30-homer threshold. Repeating our test, we find a 75 percent decrease from the 30-and-older group to the 35-and-older group in the number of players with multiple .500-plus slugging seasons, a very similar decline.

Ortiz is on pace to finish ahead of these benchmarks for the second straight year, with 21 home runs and a .532 slugging percentage through Sunday. But, as the Orioles can attest, there’s no telling how fast age can catch up with a player. After an All-Star season in 2010 at, you guessed it, 35 years old, fellow Dominican Vladimir Guerrero -- whose age has also come into question -- is on pace for career lows in home runs, slugging, and OBP.

This might seem like heresy to Red Sox Nation, but, barring the discovery of the fountain of youth, it could be in Boston’s best interest to let Big Papi walk this offseason. It’s certainly possible that Ortiz defies the odds again and keeps up this production for a year or two. It’s just that, at his price tag, the safe money would seek out a long-term replacement instead. And, for all the fond memories he’s provided, something tells me Theo Epstein isn’t the type to shell out another $12 million to sit around the clubhouse and reminisce about ’04 and ’07 ... and possibly ’11.