Apologies for my absence on Friday and Monday. First, too much work; then, returning from two days of worshipping at the shrine known as Target Field. My next post, tomorrow or Thursday, will probably just be pictures of my new favorite stadium ever.

Something for despairing fans of the (through Sunday) 16-16 Red Sox to cling to: through 32 games last year, the Yankees were actually one game worse, at 15-17. And with a -25 run differential, the Yanks had been lucky to win 15; the 2010 Sox have been only half that bad, at -12.And of course, the Yankees went on to win the World Series, playing at a 110-win pace (88-42) from that day forward.

But of course, a lot of teams start out 16-16 or 15-17, and only very few of those teams go on to win the World Series (or win much of anything at all). Is there any reason to believe the Red Sox could be the 2009 Yankees rather than, say, the 2009 White Sox?

How the Yankees Got Better
1. Mark Teixeira. After game 32 on May 12, Tex was hitting .191/.328/.418. From May 13 on, he hit .315/.396/.597 with 32 HR and 105 RBI, and (crazily) finished second in the MVP voting. May-October, near-MVP-quality Teixeira replaced April's just-over-replacement-level Teixeira.

2. Alex Rodriguez. Game 32 was just A-Rod's fourth, after missing the first month-plus with an injury. From May 13 on, he hit .288/.406/.535 with 29 HR and 96 RBI, replacing the truly replacement-level Cody Ransom. He gave some of it back with atrocious defense, which is why I listed Tex first, but nonetheless, by adding A-Rod and seeing Teixeira find himself again, they added something close to ten wins right there.

3. Brett Gardner. Through May 12, he was a very part-time player and hitting just .214/.273/.257. From May 13 on, he got more regular playing time and hit .292/.373/.427 (might make his incredibly hot start to 2010 slightly less surprising).

4. A.J. Burnett. Burnett started in the Yankees loss on the 12th, after which he sported an ugly 5.36 ERA. The rest of the way, he put up a 3.67 ERA, and the Yankees won 17 of the 26 games he started.

5. Mariano Rivera. Believe it or not, Rivera had looked human as of this time last year. He'd blown just one save in seven chances, but also came into a tie game and took a loss, and had given up 4 homers in 12 1/3 innings through the first 32 games. He gave up just 3 more homers in his final 54 innings, and put up a 1.33 ERA from May 13 on, successfully saving 38 in 39 chances.

6. Phil Hughes. On May 9, Hughes started and gave up 8 ER while recording only five outs, driving his ERA up to 8.49. He started just four more games, with uninspiring results, and made his debut in the bullpen on June 8 and was unstoppable. As a reliever, he put up a 1.40 ERA with a 5:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and just two homers allowed in 51 1/3 innings.

On the other hand: Almost everybody either played just as well as they had or got even better, but fairness requires that we note the few exceptions. Melky Cabrera had been tearing the cover off the ball through May 12, at .333/.404/.524. That predictably came to an abrupt end; he continued to get most of the playing time over Gardner in center, and hit just .262/.321/.391. Joba Chamberlain fell off quite a bit from where he was on May 12...but most of that was caused by a few brutal starts in September, after the Yankees had essentially locked down a playoff berth. Jorge Posada missed most of May and couldn't quite keep up his torrid early pace, though he still ended up with one of the best seasons a 37 year old catcher has ever had.

How the Red Sox Will Get Better
1. Victor Martinez. After a robust .303/.381/.480, V-Mart has gotten off to just a .252/.312/.383 start, even worse than Teixeira's 2009. Martinez can't help but get better than that. He's already shown significant signs of life; two of his three 2010 homers have come in the last four games (not counting Monday's).

2. David Ortiz. The #1 news story of the Sox' season so far, Ortiz has hit just .182/.264/.416 in the early going. I suspect that reports of Ortiz's demise have been highly exaggerated. After a similarly slow start last year, Ortiz hit all 28 of his home runs from Game 33 on. He might be a bit ahead of the game in 2010; he's .286/.333/.762 for May, with 3 of his 4 season homers.

3. Jacoby Ellsbury and Mike Cameron. I list them together because they're both outfielders who have been limited by injury to under 40 plate appearances, but each separately has the chance to be worth more than either of items no. 1 or 2. Their replacements are Jeremy Hermida and Darnell McDonald, who, put together, have been pretty close to replacement level (Hermida a little better, McDonald -- because of defense that's nowhere near CF-worthy -- a little worse). Both could be back by the end of the month, and it's not ridiculous to think they could combine to add 6-7 wins between their return and the end of the season.

4. Josh Beckett. I've always thought Beckett was overrated, but he's not a bad pitcher, and certainly not this bad. He's got a 7.76 ERA, but a 4.48 FIP and 4.36 xFIP, and his true talent is probably close to a run a game better than even that. Too early to say whether there's something actually dragging his numbers down -- walks are up, strikeouts down, and he's getting hit harder -- or whether it's just something he'll get figured out.

On the other hand: well, there's not much to put here. No single player on the Sox is playing over his head. Adrian Beltre won't hit .333 all year, but he's also likely to hit more than his current pace of 10-12 homers, and make fewer than his current pace of 35-40 errors. The other pitchers -- at the least, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholtz and John Lackey -- are as likely to see their ERAs get better as worse.

Why They Won't Do It Anyway
It's not crazy to think they might, actually. They don't have any one ace in the hole that's likely to be as big as either Teixeira or A-Rod was for the Yankees last year, but if you add it all up, there's a chance it'll be close. An improvement by V-Mart could add 4 wins, Ortiz 2, Ellsbury and Cameron 7, Beckett 3.5 or so. If you assume they're truly a .500 team without any of those things happening, their perfect world projection for the season would be something like 98-64 (going 82-48 the rest of the way, 17 games above .500 -- 34 games by the usual reckoning, that is, but 17 if you actually take a second and think about it). That might not win the division, but it ought to be more than enough for the Wildcard.

The main concern is their competition. At the end of play on May 12, 2009, the Yankees were 6.5 games out of first, but they were trailing the shocking 23-12 Blue Jays, who nobody expected to be nearly that good...and they weren't, playing .409 ball the rest of the way. The Red Sox sat 5.5 games ahead, but the Yankees significantly outclassed them as well (and didn't even need to, as the Red Sox coasted to the Wildcard).

Meanwhile, the 2010 Red Sox entered Monday an identical 6.5 games back, but the Yankees and Rays, six and six-and-a-half games off on the horizon, are much more concerning. In 2009, everyone expected the Yankees to be (at least) one of the two best teams in the league; starting 2010, the Red Sox looked, at best, on a level with the Yankees and Rays. The fact that they're now 6-plus games behind their two peers, as I've noted before, is a really bad sign and a big hurdle to jump. It's one thing to be six back of a Jays team that was playing way over its head; it's quite another to be six back of two teams that might really be exactly this good.

It's very far from a lost season for the Sox (and it's way too early to start sounding the death knell for "run prevention," a good strategy that is actually working pretty well; it's just that the defense can't prevent walks and homers, and can't make the DH start hitting). But they could get a ton better, and would still have a huge hill to climb. Entirely possible, just unlikely.