If this were, say, 2016, the Red Sox would likely boast one of the best rotations in Major League Baseball.
After all, who wouldn't want a staff led by Chris Sale, James Paxton and Corey Kluber in their prime? That trio alone would be reason enough to consider the Red Sox as the favorites to win the competitive American League East.
Alas, this isn't 2016 and instead of having a top-flight troika of front-of-the-rotation starters, the Red Sox have some aging pitchers, all of whom have some measure of uncertainty.
Sale, who underwent Tommy John surgery in 2020, has pitched just 48.1 innings over the last three seasons. Paxton, who had Tommy John in 2021, didn't throw a single pitch in the big leagues last season and has logged a mere 21.2 innings since the start of 2020. Finally, there's Kluber, the most durable of the three in recent seasons, but who missed almost all of both 2019 and 2020.
The three were once reliable workhorses, capable of contributing 200 or more innings per season. Kluber won two Cy Young Awards and finished third in the balloting two other times. Sale has never won a Cy Young Award, but he had an astonishing run that saw him finish in the Top 5 in the voting for six consecutive seasons from 2013-2018. Paxton never garnered any Cy Young votes, but from 2016-2018, he had a nearly .700 winning percentage and a 3.54 ERA.
That, however, was then. And this is now.
And now is about monitoring workloads, easing the pitchers into the season and hoping, perhaps against hope, that they all hold up for the majority of the season. As the Red Sox -- and pitchers themselves -- know all too well, there are no guarantees.
Take last year. Sale, sufficiently recovered from his elbow procedure, cracked a rib before spring training began, suffered a broken finger in his second start back, then fractured his non-throwing hand in a bike spill as he attempted to come back from his most recent setback. Paxton, meanwhile, missed most of the year. Then, just as it seemed as though he might be ramping up to contribute in the final month of the season, he suffered a strained lat in his first minor league rehab start.
By contrast, Kluber was a veritable Iron Man, tossing 164 innings for the Tampa Bay Rays. Still, as Kluber acknowledges, at 36, he must make concessions to his advancing age. In his introductory press conference with the Boston media last month, Kluber said he learned last year to scale back some of his between-start throwing routines to preserve his body for the demands of the long season.
With all three having had major physical setbacks in recent seasons, they exude an unmistakable joy in just being healthy this spring. Sale threw his first bullpen of the spring Wednesday, with another set for the weekend and a live batting practice sessions set for early next week. He jokingly boasted that he didn't need any more rehab and that he now qualified as "a real boy.''
Paxton, too, expressed gratitude for being able to participate in pitchers fielding practice Thursday, something he surely didn't savor nearly as much during his younger, healthier years. Paxton surprised many when he elected to exercise a rather affordable player option at $4 million and return to the Sox this season rather than opt to test a pitching-starved free-agent market.
"I haven't pitched healthy in like three years,'' he said. "I'm comfortable here. I'm trying to establish myself back in the big leagues and I feel like this is a place for me to do it.
Asked Thursday following a bullpen how many starts he was expecting to make in 2023, he responded without hesitation or ambiguity: "As many as I can -- that's about it.''
That may be a reasonable and rational outlook for Paxton to express, but it hardly encourages much optimism. If Paxton had been more certain about his ability to pitch at the same level he did before his surgery, he likely would have auctioned himself to a much higher bidder.
Instead, he returned to the Red Sox, citing familiarity and comfort.
Asked what he would say to those who doubt the trio's durability, Paxton didn't exactly throw down a challenge flag.
"Wait and see,'' he said. "We're all out here, we're going to do the best we can. I know everyone's coming in feeling really good.''
Maybe it will work out for both sides. Perhaps Paxton will be healthy and give the Sox a solid No. 3 option in their rotation. Perhaps, too, Sale will make up for lost time and, however late in the game, validate the extension he signed before the 2019 season. And perhaps Kluber will continue to build his workload, having doubled his innings from 80 in 2021 to 164 last season.
Maybe.
But don't bet on all of those things happening. Which, in turn, makes the Red Sox a hard team on which to bet.