Is the deck stacked against Sox this year?

The Red Sox were the best team in baseball last year from wire to wire, and excluding two Erics (Gagne and Hinske) and one Curt (Schilling), they might start the year with the same roster that won the World Series. It’s been an amazingly inactive offseason for Theo Epstein. After five years of roster overhauls, he seems happy with the group he’s assembled. Clearly, there is reason to be content. But could this be a summer of discontent?

You don’t have to go back any further than 2006 when the Red Sox only won 86 games and failed to make the playoffs. But you can also go back to 2002 when 93 wins wasn’t enough for the Red Sox to make the playoffs. In fact, 98 wins wouldn’t have been enough, because the Yankees won the American League East with 103 wins, and the Mariners took the wild card with 99 wins. In 2001, the Oakland A’s were a wild card team with 102 wins. Over the last 10 years, the wild card winner from the American League has averaged 95.5 wins.

So, what’s all this talk about the wild card? Well, the Red Sox have the distinct disadvantage of playing in the same division as a team with a $200 million payroll. While the Yankees look vulnerable, they can’t be counted out. Meanwhile, the Red Sox have been to the playoffs 6 times in the last 10 years, four times as the wild card. The wild card is the ace up their sleeve, so to speak.

But the wild card could be coming from the stacked deck known as the American League Central this year. Cleveland remains the flavor of the spring as a team that might actually be ready to win the World Series this year. And Detroit, which scored the third-most runs in baseball last year, added Miguel Cabrera to their lineup and Dontrelle Willis to their rotation. In the American League West, do you think the Mariners, who won 88 games last year, are capable of winning 95 this year after adding Erik Bedard and Carlos Silva to their rotation?

I haven’t even mentioned Toronto, which a lot of baseball people think can make the East a three-team race for a change.

So, were the Red Sox wise to stand pat while several other teams made strides to improve themselves? Yes. Bring that dominant team back and try to do it again. And no. Already without Schilling, the Red Sox are counting on a 41-year-old knuckleballer, a 23-year-old rookie, a young lefty who’s never made more than 15 starts, and a corpulent Bartolo Colon. Meanwhile, the competition got better.

Bob Halloran is a sports anchor and reporter. He’s also the author of “Irish Thunder: The Hard Life and Times of Micky Ward,” published by The Lyons Press.