The Sox have the right idea

Much props to Theo Epstein on how he built this pitching staff. Terry Francona deserves a lot of credit about the decisions that he has made as well. The hardest thing to find in baseball right now is power pitching for the rotation. The Sox have three of them at the top of their rotation. Schilling may have lost some mph off of his fastball, but he is still capable of dominating a game. Dice-K has looked like he is going to be the real deal in his three starts, and Beckett has looked like he finally "gets it" after stubbornly relying on his fastball last year. Wakefield is a nice complement to these three power pitchers and can throw a lineup off track with the knuckler. Honestly, it doesn't much matter who the #5 guy is. Tavarez is fine for now. Jon Lester is likely to take over in the spot by the all-star break.

Their bullpen looked to be their achilles heal as the end of spring training neared, but the smartest decision they made was to move Papelbon back to the closer role. That moved everyone else in their flawed bullpen down a spot. This year's version of Donnelly, Pineiro, Timlin and Romero are all shells of what they were a couple of years ago. Despite giving up a HR on his first big league pitch, Okajima has looked like a decent middle man. The Sox are just hoping that Delcarmen and Hansen can find their stuff at AAA and become setup men at some point this summer.