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With Sale Acquisition, Red Sox Step To Front Of American League Pack

By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) -- As the old saying goes -- if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

As it applies to the Boston Red Sox, the adage gets tweaked slightly. If you can't replace David Ortiz, you might as well go out and get one the best pitchers in baseball.

That's exactly what the Red Sox did in acquiring Chris Sale from the White Sox. Factor in the acquisition of reliever Tyler Thornburg earlier on Tuesday, and it was a pretty momentous day in the 2016-17 offseason for Dave "The Pelican" Dombrowski.

While the acquisitions are excellent and much-needed, the greatest development of the day for Boston is this: Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley Jr. all remain on the roster. To a somewhat lesser extent, it's a boon that Blake Swihart, Christian Vazquez, Rafael Devers, Jason Groome and Sam Travis remain under team control.

Yes, departing with Travis Shaw, Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Mauricio Dubon, Luis Basabe, Josh Pennington and Victor Diaz represents various levels of risk. Certainly, Shaw underwhelmed in 2016, but he's still just 26 years old. Moncada looked to be in completely over his head during his brief big league stint this year, but he was baseball's No. 1 prospect as recently as July. Kopech can tickle 105 on the radar gun, Basabe's got loads of potential, and so on and so forth.

Heck, go back to last year's trades of Anderson Espinoza, Manuel Margot and Javier Guerra, and one could make a valid case that the Red Sox' farm system is being depleted rather quickly by Dombrowski. That may be true, but it's an argument for another day. For now, the Red Sox are setting themselves up to be the best team the American League has to offer.

In 2016, they weren't far off, winning 93 games -- one fewer than the AL Central-winning Indians, and two fewer than the AL West-winning Rangers. No other AL team won 90 games.

Now, the Red Sox offer a devastating three-man front to their rotation, featuring reigning Cy Young winner Rick Porcello, Sale and David Price. That's a trio that pitched a combined 679.2 innings last season, with a combined 3.50 ERA. Price led the AL in innings pitched. Sale ranked third, and Porcello was fourth. They were also all in the top 10 in strikeouts, with Sale (second, 233) and Price (fourth, 228) ahead of Porcello (eighth, 189).

For context, no other AL team employs even two pitchers who finished in the top 10 in innings pitched last season, and only Kansas City (with Danny Duffy and Ian Kennedy ranking ninth and 10th, respectively) has two pitchers in the top 10 in strikeouts.

And certainly, rounding out the rotation with Steven Wright (3.33 ERA in 24 starts in 2016) and some combination of Eduardo Rodriguez, Clay Buchholz and Drew Pomeranz presents as good a one-through-five as there is in the AL.

And the pitching strength doesn't lie solely in the rotation. That's the crucial element, as both the Cubs and Indians displayed this October how vital the back end of a bullpen can be. While matching the one-two combo of Cleveland's Andrew Miller and Cody Allen may not be attainable, having a trio of Carson Smith, Tyler Thorburn and Craig Kimbrel is no small feat.

Smith is coming off Tommy John surgery, but he's struck out 11.6 batters per nine innings in his young career to go with a 2.00 ERA and a sub-1.000 WHIP. Thornburg is coming off a season where he posted a 2.15 ERA, 0.940 WHIP and 90 strikeouts over 67 innings pitched. And though Kimbrel struggled while adjusting to playing in Boston, he did record 31 saves and a 1.094 WHIP, with 83 strikeouts over 53 innings.

As far as long-term planning goes, the Red Sox may indeed one day find themselves lacking the players in the farm to fill gaps on the big league roster or complete trades like the one consummated on Tuesday. But for now? The team is positively stacked in the rotation and in the bullpen.

Of course, this all comes back to one thing: David Ortiz is gone, and there is no way of replacing him. The man led all of baseball in slugging (.620) and OPS (1.021). He led the Red Sox in home runs (38), RBIs (127), doubles (48) and walks (80). Of the Red Sox 878 runs, Ortiz drove in 15 percent of them himself. And there's no way to properly calculate how the presence of Ortiz in the three or four spot in the order aided those batting around him with better pitches to see.

Even if the Red Sox manage to sign Edwin Encarnacion, MLB's No. 1 offense will almost assuredly take a step backward in 2017.

Dombrowski recognized that, and rather than banging his head against the wall and shooting for the impossible, he did what he could do. He added arguably the best pitcher in the American League since 2012.

And in the span of just a few hours on Tuesday, the Red Sox have gone from having an utterly plain offseason to laying claim as the best team in the AL.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.

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