Boston Red Sox

Nobody can say the Boston Red Sox are lacking in stars heading into 2016. To rise from the depths of the AL East, all they need is for their stars to live up to their track records.

Now for the part where we cast the ol' side-eye at Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval.

About a year-and-a-half has passed since the Boston Red Sox gave Rusney Castillo a seven-year, $72.5 million contract, and he's still a riddle with mystery and enigma coverings.

But maybe not for much longer. Castillo has star potential in him somewhere, and he's finally in a position to let it out in 2016.

Yoan Moncada is 20 years old, and his entire professional career consists of 81 games at one of the lowest levels of the minor leagues.

So why are we already asking when (not if) he'll become a major league star?

Boston Red Sox third baseman Pablo Sandoval, nicknamed "Kung Fu Panda," has long drawn attention due to his weight. It rarely got in the way of his performance on the field, but Sandoval's first season of a five-year, $95 million deal with the Red Sox was the worst of his eight-year career. 

At the end of 2016, Hub fans will finally bid adieu to Big Papi. And also, welcome his heir.

Former MLB third baseman Frank Malzone, who made six All-Star teams with the Boston Red Sox, died Tuesday. He was 85.

The Red Sox confirmed Malzone's death on their Twitter feed.    

Twenty-four years after he played his final game for the organization, the Boston Red Sox announced Monday they will retire Wade Boggs' No. 26 in May.

Boggs was overwhelmed upon hearing the news:

Strictly going off their last four seasons, the Boston Red Sox have a 25 percent chance of finishing in first place in 2016 and a 75 percent chance of finishing in last place.

But in the words of Han Solo, never tell me the odds. Not those odds, anyway. The 2016 Red Sox are custom-designed to avoid the fate of the 2012, 2014 and 2015 clubs, and we're here to promise they will.

It was Tuesday, Sept. 1, when they all filed into the Fenway Park baseball conference room: pro scouts, amateur scouts, administrators—all for one of those change-of-command meetings that can lead to sleepless nights and bottles of Tums.

Dave Dombrowski, hired a mere two weeks earlier as Boston's incoming president of baseball operations, walked in to conduct the meeting and, as he did, carried with him a couple of the thickest notebook binders that maybe had ever been seen in Fenway.

$217 million...for a freaking pitcher?!? Now I know I've seen it all.

After a half-century of baseball, blizzards, college students and traffic, my bucket list is nearly complete. I've even seen Pablo Sandoval leg out a triple.

Happy 50th birthday to me: I am Boston's famed Citgo sign.

On this week in 1965, my then-neon red and blue hues first lit the sky above Kenmore Square. I have been a fixture for Red Sox fans, Bostonians and visitors from everywhere ever since.