Ron Borges

The street that runs in front of Fenway Park, baseball's venerable old address, is jammed with cranes, temporary metal fences and men in work boots and Red Sox caps these cold winter days. If you didn't know better, you'd think they were tearing the place down. They're not, but Red Sox management is doing the same thing to Fenway that they did to their team this offseason. They're renovating to the point where you might not recognize some things any more. Like the infield.

The .406 Club that once towered over home plate is gone, replaced by real seats for really wealthy people and some open space. On the field it's pretty much the same — open space to be filled by some really wealthy people although generally not as wealthy as the ones they're replacing.

Now that the long winter of Theo Epstein's discontent is over and he is back as the team's new El Jefe of Beisbol, the team he takes over bears little resemblance to the one he left in a snit last Halloween. That's the night he decided he simply had too many philosophical differences with the direction the team was headed (translation: too many shouting matches with his mentor and, some would say, creator, Larry Lucchino). So he slipped into a gorilla suit and walked past an armada of reporters without being noticed into what turned out to be a brief and disconcerting retirement.

He's back now after much pleading from owner John Henry and the growing sense that maybe he found out he wasn't quite as hot a commodity in the rest of the baseball world as he thought he was. But center fielder Johnny Damon is not back. Third baseman Bill Mueller is not back. First baseman Kevin Millar is not back. Shortstop Edgar Renteria is not back. In fact, the entire infield is gone, having been remade into a unit that will feature untested Kevin Youkilis and J.T. Snow at first base, Mark Loretta, once an All-Star but coming off a season of injury at 34, at second, Alex Gonzalez at shortstop and Mike Lowell (is he 32 or 102?) at third. Other than that, the Red sox stood pat.

Well, not really. They also lost the team's spiritual center when Damon bolted for bigger bucks from the Yankees. He'll be replaced by a guy with a great nickname, Coco Crisp, but it remains to be seen if a guy named after a cereal can do more for Boston than Damon did the last two years. Damon was arguably the best leadoff man in the American League and a guy who thrived in the hothouse environment of Fenway Park. Crisp lacks Damon's power and it is yet to be seen if he can take the heat that is likely to arise this season if he starts slow or appears to not quite yet be ready to do all the things Damon did.

That heat melted even a veteran All-Star like Renteria last summer. Will Coco go loco? Stay tuned.

Then there's the case of returning right fielder Trot Nixon, who has missed 152 games to injury since he signed a three-year contract before the 2004 season. Nixon is still as hard-nosed as ever but that's part of the reason he's hurt so often. His numbers at the plate have predictably gone down since the injuries began to ravage him, so one has to wonder how much he has left. If it's not enough, who's next?

The Sox still have two of the games most dangerous hitters in the middle of their lineup in Manny Ramirez (unless he decides to ask to be traded for the 101st time since he came to Boston) and David Ortiz. Lowell is another big bat if he's healthy, but can the threesome produce the kind of power overall the team has shown in the three years since Epstein was first named general manager?

During those seasons the Sox scored 2,820 runs (or about 5.8 runs per game). That's nearly 200 more than any other team in baseball over the same period. It is a significant reason why they won the World Series two years ago and regularly were a threat to win 95 games the past three years.

But that was with Mueller's bat and Damon's bat and, yes, even Renteria's bat, which lasted only a season before he was shipped off to Atlanta amid the contention he was not mentally suited for the high-stress existence of being a Boston Red sox.

He has been replaced by Gonzalez, who is far better defensively but carries nowhere near the bat Renteria has. One can argue that's a fair tradeoff because the Sox ranked 22nd in the major leagues last year in defense. Only six teams made more errors last year, in large part because Renteria booted more balls than David Beckham. But consider this: Two years ago the Sox also led the major leagues in errors yet managed to win the World Series for the first time in 85 years. So what's more important — scoring runs or preventing them? We're about to find out.

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