Shane Victorino is set for introduction as a member of the Red Sox on Thursday. But even while he is front and center, a great deal of attention will turn to The Man Who Isn’t There.

It is now more than 10 full days since the Red Sox and Mike Napoli reached an agreement on a three-year, $39 million deal for the first baseman. A pair of anticipated dates for his introductory press conference in Fenway Park have come and gone, including one that was slated for Tuesday but got pushed back after a physical.

It remains to be seen how the Napoli situation shakes out, and the precise situation that is delaying the introduction of the 31-year-old. But, the fact that a physical issue may loom over the first major Red Sox offseason move carries with it a poignant reminder.

The Red Sox have been undone in no small part in the last three years by a devastating run of injuries. This offseason seemingly represented an opportunity for the team to gain some separation from that inglorious recent past.

At this point a year ago, the Sox knew that they were going to be without John Lackey all season and without Daisuke Matsuzaka and Ryan Kalish for significant chunks of the year. Soon, they’d figure out that Carl Crawford and Bobby Jenks would lag behind.

But those players were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in a season that saw Jacoby Ellsbury sidelined for almost all of the first half, David Ortiz miss most of the second half, Andrew Bailey miss all but the last seven weeks of the year and so many more.

The team lost an astonishing 1,788 days to the disabled list. In all, more than $60 million of the team’s roughly $190 million payroll (as calculated for luxury tax purposes) was dedicated to players who were on the DL. The impact was two-fold: The Sox were without a number of their key players and they lacked the financial flexibility to add respectable replacements.

In that sense, the Napoli issue is somewhat ominous. The Sox entered the offseason without known health issues that should impact the availability of any of their regulars, but even before the delay in Napoli’s introduction, it seemed likely that the Sox would face health issues with their roster at some point.

After all, all of the team’s signings at this stage of the offseason have been for players on the wrong side of 30. David Ortiz, 36, re-signed to a two-year deal. Napoli (31), Victorino (32), Jonny Gomes (32) and David Ross (35) all have signed multi-year deals, while the team has also reached an agreement with right-hander Koji Uehara (37) on a one-year deal. For good measure, the Sox, according to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, are in “serious discussions” with 35-year-old right-hander Ryan Dempster.

In the longer-term, the Sox are looking to get younger. The team is laying the groundwork in 2014 and beyond for a deep group of twentysomethings -- Will Middlebrooks, Xander Bogaerts, Ryan Lavarnway, Bryce Brentz, Jose Iglesias or Deven Marrero, Junichi Tazawa, Felix Doubront, Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster, Matt Barnes and perhaps Ryan Kalish and/or Bryce Brentz -- who can give the team a young group of players who should be at the peak of their physical abilities and as healthy as they’ll ever be.

But for now, the team is trying to forge a path to competitiveness while buying time for those young players to develop. In the process, they want to avoid sacrificing that young talent -- whether by trading top prospects or, ideally, conceding a draft pick.

And the result this offseason has been a series of relatively short-term deals for players who are capable of performing at high levels but whose age and/or health limitations made them available without extending beyond three years.

As a consequence, the 2013 Red Sox are shaping up as a team with a relatively old group of position players, increasing the likelihood of either performance dips or injuries. A position-by-position look at how the club currently stacks up (with 2012 playing age, and then 2012 games played in parentheses) underscores the notion:

LINEUP

DH: David Ortiz (36, 90)

C: Jarrod Saltalamacchia (27, 121)

1B: Mike Napoli* (30, 108)

2B: Dustin Pedroia (28, 141)

3B: Will Middlebrooks (23, 99)

SS: Jose Iglesias (22, 115)

LF: Jonny Gomes (31, 99)

CF: Jacoby Ellsbury (28, 82)

RF: Shane Victorino (31, 154)

BENCH

C: David Ross (35, 62)

UT: Pedro Ciriaco (26, 130)

OF: Ryan Kalish (24, 69)

??

The fact that Pedro Ciriaco had the third highest total of games played among projected members of the 2013 Red Sox roster speaks volumes about the dreadful health of Sox players last year. Of the team’s projected starters, only Jarrod Saltalamacchia is both in his 20s and managed to avoid the disabled list for all of last year.

Middlebrooks was injured in a fluke, a fastball that hit him squarely in a spot of grave vulnerability. The broken wrist that ended his season isn’t a chronic concern. Nor, for that matter, are the two car crashes that cost Ellsbury so much of the 2010 and 2012 seasons, though it is worth asking whether his all-around, physically demanding game will leave him vulnerable to further traumatic injuries, much as one can ask the same about Pedroia and Kalish. Iglesias, meanwhile, still has yet to demonstrate that he can play a professional season with full health. 

It’s entirely possible that after a few years of health misfortunes, the Sox will enjoy a considerable improvement in their ability to stay on the field in 2013. If so, the team’s competitive ambitions would enjoy a major step forward.

But while the Sox aren’t hamstrung by the same roster inefficiency that characterized their team a year ago, as constituted, the Sox may face a challenge in keeping their anticipated everyday players on the field. The team, mindful of that, has made moves to add quality depth (players like Gomes and Ross) and players with positional versatility (Victorino, Napoli) as forms of insurance against injury.

All the same, while the Sox lay the groundwork for their next core group of prospects starting in 2014 and beyond, their competitive aspirations for 2013 may rest on the ability of the club to keep an older roster on the field. In that sense, the silence surrounding Napoli represents the first cautionary note of next season, something of a yellow flag about the challenges that lie ahead.