Merry Christmas, Red Sox fans!

So not only do we find Adrian Gonzalez in our Christmas stockings, when we pull him out we find that there was room for Carl Crawford in there, too! Santa says, "Theo Epstein, you've been a very good boy this year."

A lineup of

Ellsbury
Pedroia
Gonzalez
Youkilis
Crawford
Ortiz
Drew
Saltalamacchia/Varitek
Scutaro/Lowrie

is a lineup that will score a lot of runs. It will hit for average, it will produce a ton of baserunners, it will produce a lot of home runs, a plethora of doubles and a slew of stolen bases.

I'll a fuller analysis when we get closer to the start of the season, when we know a little bit more about what the bullpen is going to look like, what the bench is going to look like. But even if the Yankees sign Cliff Lee, as everyone expects, the Red Sox are going to go into the 2011 season as at least co-favorites to be the best team in baseball. Again.



(Now, does Tony Massarotti spend the day claiming that "hey, they took my advice"?)