Can the Red Sox boost their win total by becoming more efficient?

Rob Neyer of ESPN penned an interesting piece for ESPN Insider yesterday where he compared how efficiently Boston and New York used their run differential in 2005. Basically the premis is this: you can reasonably predict a team's wins and losses by knowing its overall run differential. But that was not the case last year when Boston's run differential was much greater then New York's yet the Red Sox finished three back of the Yanks in the American League East.

Here are the numbers: The Sox outscored their opponents 949-769 last year while New York's totals were 897-808. Neyer then filters the numbers through his magic sifter and says that based on run differential, the 2005 Yanks look like a 92 game winner while the Sox look like a 106 win team. The moral to this story is that the Yanks were much more efficient with their production last year. The Yanks tended to win a great deal of close games, while the Sox were prone to winning a lot of blowouts and guilty of losing a lot of close games.

So what does this mean for the year ahead? I think the Yankess cannot possibly hope to win as many comebacks as they won last year, but perhaps they won't have to. With a much better staff, the Yankee run differential should improve as Johnson and Pavano weigh down the latter half of the run differential equation. I don't think the Yankees can possibly be as efficient as they were last year, but that doesn't mean they won't win at least as many games. The Sox on the other hand can look at last year's numbers with some optimism. If Matt Mantei can bring some stability to the eighth inning and the defense is sound, the Sox efficiency should rise. Thus, if Boston can generally maintain last season's differential, the Sox should be able to parley greater efficiency into more wins in 05. I am not sure it will be enough to pass the Yankees, but I beleive that the Sox can approach the 100 game plateau.