"Between them, Josh Beckett and Jonathan Papelbon will count for $29 million on the Red Sox' record payroll this year. And yet the men who once stood as the bookends of the Boston pitching staff might now serve as the biggest questions entering this go-for-broke season.

Maybe it was only fitting, then, that on the day the Red Sox identified Beckett as the No. 4 starter in a five-man staff, Papelbon went out and got slapped around in an 8-5 victory over the New York Mets at City of Palms Park. The Red Sox have rebuilt themselves over the last two winters with the acquisitions of, among others, John Lackey, Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, turning over the nucleus of their roster in hopes of reclaiming superiority in both the American League East and all of baseball.

Not so long ago, Beckett and Papelbon were the nucleus around whom the Sox were built, at least with regard to the pitching staff. In 11 combined appearances during the 2007 postseason, Beckett and Papelbon went 5-0 with four saves and a 0.89 ERA. In 40.2 innings, the two allowed 24 hits and 6 walks while amassing 42 strikeouts, the kind of dominating numbers that explain why the Red Sox were unbeatable at the beginning of any series and unbeatable at the end."