Are you basing this confidence on the pre-Bloom days or second-hand quotes you've read or heard the past year (from maybe Werner, Kennedy or Lebron)? Because Henry has been absolutely MIA for over a year since telling us how sad he was that his modern-day Stan Musial had to be traded to LA...
The pen was one of the many weak parts in 2020, but mainly weakened by the weakest part: the starting notation. If the starters can improve to mediocre, the pen could be above-average.
Starting pitchers have to be either the biggest questions or weakest links, depending on the answers. The winter's lone acquisition for the rotation was good for a few seasons, six years ago. Three others have career losing records. ERod is such a key, if he's fully healthy and back to '19 form...
Surprise contenders often seem to "discover" a young pitcher by mid-season who becomes a major contributor and infuses hope. Who will be that guy in Boston? Can we even identify a candidate on the farm -- especially, now that Mata is out?
Can the Sox not draft Rocker or Leiter #4 if either is still on the board in July? We know how low the odds are for using first-round picks on pitchers, but opportunities are rare for adding mound talent with legitimate high-upside to a system. By all accounts the Vandy pitchers are exceptional; it's not like media outlets were drooling over who would get Trey Ball a decade ago.
Tampa has the Number One ranked farm right now, and a lot is based on arms; it's also a caution against predicting the Sox to win more than the Rays (even without Snell).
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
We all know this 2021 payroll is tied up with a lot of dead money of players no longer here or currently unavailable... and that "owing" isn't quite the same as "spending". But such limitations are probably the reason the Sox opted for -- and these are just examples that don't necessarily correlate -- Richards over Odorizzi, Renfroe over Rosario, Marwin over Semien, Ottavino (really German) over Hand, etc, etc.
I'm not a pessimist, but you'd have to be quite an optimist to think nothing has changed in the way this franchise is doing business going forward... not when we haven't heard one peep out of the principal owner in over a year.