Clay Buchholz was right about one thing.
It's far too early in the season to declare the Boston Red Sox are in any kind of trouble.
Buchholz may even have been right about two things, because in his "don't panic" speech to reporters (including MLB.com's Ian Browne) last week, the Boston right-hander also declared the Sox "have the best pitcher in the world right now on our team."
He wasn't talking about himself.
The Red Sox do have David Price, and when Price beat the Toronto Blue Jays in an impressive 4-2 win Saturday, the Sox looked like they hoped to look this season. Price's strong outing followed a very good start by Rick Porcello in a Friday win and preceded a decent start by Steven Wright in a loss to the Blue Jays on Sunday.
Oh, and even with all of that, the Red Sox rotation still owns the second-highest ERA (4.82) in the American League.
Even with Price and Porcello pitching well, they still have the same basic issue that landed them in last place in the AL East in 2015, when the 4.39 rotation ERA ranked 24th in the majors. And the year before, when Boston's last-place rotation ranked 26th with a 4.36 ERA.
For all of the talk about Hanley Ramirez—who is "completely different" this year, as Red Sox manager John Farrell told Aaron Leibowitz of MLB.com)= on Sunday—it's still going to come down to the starters.
For all of the questions about Pablo Sandoval—Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe dedicated part of his Sunday notes column to figuring out how the Red Sox can get rid of him—Buchholz and the rest of the rotation are far more crucial to what happens the rest of this season.
They might benefit from the return of catcher Christian Vazquez. The Boston Globe's Alex Speier made a nice case for Vazquez's pitch-framing ability.
Ultimately, though, it's going to come down to how they pitch. For the Red Sox to win, they're going to need to prove the concerns raised by rival scouts this spring were overblown, rather than an accurate assessment of the challenges the Sox would face.
So far, they've done little to prove it.
Buchholz has started twice, giving up five runs each time and lasting just nine total innings going into his Monday morning Patriots' Day start against the Blue Jays. Joe Kelly gave up seven runs in his season debut and carries a 10.13 ERA into his start Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
As one scout said last week about Buchholz, he has a hard time sustaining success and just as hard of a time making it through the season healthy. As for Kelly, the eight walks in eight innings so far this season suggest he might not be able to sustain the improvement he seemed to show late last season.
Porcello is more dependable, at least as far as making his starts and pitching his innings. But he has made 30 starts since the Red Sox traded for him and handed him $82.5 million, and his 4.93 ERA over that span is the third-worst in baseball among pitchers with at least 160 innings.
Wright, meanwhile, is a knuckleballer who is only in the rotation because Eduardo Rodriguez isn't. Rodriguez got hurt early in spring training and still isn't close to returning.
If he comes back and pitches anything like he did last season, Rodriguez could give the Red Sox rotation a serious boost. If Porcello can look anything like he did Friday, that would obviously be a big boost, too.
It's far too early to say none of that will happen. It's far too early to say there's no chance the Red Sox starters will get it together.
For now, though, there's that 4.82 ERA that only serves to confirm the spring concerns. Even with "the best pitcher in the world right now," the Red Sox look like they have a rotation that's not close to being good enough.
For now, it looks far too much like it did last year.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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