Ladies and Gentleman, your 2011 Boston Red Sox!

A 2-8 record, tied for the worst in baseball.

Four and a half games out of first place.

Swept by the Rangers and the Indians (who have two of the three best records in baseball). 

Crushed on Monday by a Rays team that entered the game 1-8 and ranked 30th, 30th, 30th and 30th in runs scored, batting average, OBP and slugging percentage.  

The worst run differential in baseball (-31).

A team batting average of .231, which is the same average put up in the final season of the career of Mr. Mario Mendoza.

A team ERA of 7.24, dead last in the American League.

Twenty-one homers allowed against just six team homers (hey, more homers than Nelson Cruz for the first team this season).

A disaster. The Worst Team Money Can Buy. Overrated (clap, clap, clap clap clap). We've heard the 100-win jokes over the last 10 days and I get why. To this point the team has been an absolute disgrace.

But if you asked me to use one word to describe the start of the 2011 Red Sox? 

Encouraging.

We'll get to why in a minute, but first let's take a look at what 10 games really mean. Ten games is about six percent of a major-league season. If the Patriots were losing, say, 24-7 with three minutes left in Week 1 would it mean a whole lot? How about if the Celtics started 2-3? Of course not. If a Nicolas Cage movie is a crap-fest 11 minutes in would you walk out? OK, bad example.

I'm not saying all fans are like this when it comes to this stuff. Many if not most have been fairly measured about the start, (even before the Yankees series) save for the dopes who blamed this start on "lack of competition" in spring training (gee, how does Albert Pujols manage to put up a .320/40/120 every year without the fear of losing his job every March?) 

People, I think, understand that Carl Crawford is not going to hit .163 this season (though they are also beginning to understand that he's overpaid by half). Too much history. Same -- to a lesser extent -- for Jacoby Ellsbury and his .194 average. And while there is always a worry regarding the health of Kevin Youkilis, does anyone think he finishes the 2011 season with a slugging percentage of .267?

Slow starts? Sure. Meaningful? I don't see it.

No one talked about Kevin Youkilis or Carl Crawford or Clay Buchholz or Dan Wheeler (18.90 ERA) or Daniel Bard when listing potential road blocks to the AL East title.

Nope. The three names that kept popping up were John Lackey, Jonathan Papelbon and Josh Beckett.

And now we have arrived at encouraging.

Well, with a slight detour. Sorry, John Lackey, you can tell us how close you are to turning the corner, but we are officially at need to see it stage. Two absolutely pathetic performances to start the season. OK, they came against maybe the two best lineups in baseball, but a 15.58 ERA? A WHIP that is academically eligible to play college sports (2.42)? Opposing batters hitting .395? Forget the Anaheim John Lackey -- if I might paraphrase Smiling Jack Ross, that Lackey is gone, there is no Anaheim Lackey -- right now you'd sign for the 2010 Lackey. 

Which was a whole lot better than the 2010 Josh Beckett. One game is the smallest of sample size, but just knowing that Beckett is still actually capable of a performance like the one on Sunday night means something. We haven't seen anything close to that from Beckett in the last 20 months. On August 12, 2009, Beckett allowed two runs in seven innings in a win over the Tigers. He was 14-4 on the season, with an ERA of 3.10 and was right in the middle of the Cy Young mix. 

In the 31 starts between that win over the Tigers and Sunday night Beckett had an ERA of 5.89. So while it's a massive reach to suggest that Beckett is back to his 2007 form -- I'll take 31 starts over one when it comes to evidence -- at least the form still exists. 

Jonathan Papelbon didn't fall off a cliff as Beckett did in 2010, but we all saw the decline. Walks way up, ERA way up, WHIP the highest it had been since 2005. Papelbon had gone from a guy who seemed ready to assume the crown from Mariano Rivera to a guy who seemed ready to … what, exactly? Settle into the middle of the pack as a closer in what will be his final year in Boston? Maybe not make it through the year as a ninth-inning guy? 

Well, if three innings mean anything (didn't I just write three paragraphs back that one game is the smallest of sample sizes? What a moron.) the 2011 Papelbon is doing a swell impression of the 2006 Papelbon. Seven strikeouts (he had seven Ks over three innings only once last year) against just a single walk (and that was an intentional pass to Josh Hamilton). He's been what he hasn't been since he walked on the mound in Game 3 vs. the Angels. Dominant.

Look, caveats abound here, obviously. Forgetting that Papelbon and Beckett could just as easily (or perhaps more likely, even) revert to 2010 form, there is reason for concern with this team. I'm not dismissing 2-8 just because it's April 12. Daisuke Matsuzaka. John Lackey. Marco Scutaro. Fill in the lefty reliever here. Jarrod Saltalamacchia. All very real problems that might not be solved.

So maybe "encouraged" isn't the perfect word. But the Red Sox can make the playoffs with Alfredo Aceves as the fifth starter. They can win 90-plus games with Jed Lowrie at shortstop, or with Saltalamacchia hitting .220, provided everyone else is doing what they've done in the past.

But they need Beckett/Lackey/Papelbon to be right if they are going to play in October. And just a week and a half into the season, we've seen that two-thirds of that group has at least shown that we might be witnessing bounce-back years.

I'll ask this: Would you rather the Red Sox be 2-8 with promising performances from Beckett (2.08 ERA) and Papelbon or 6-4 with two 2010 starts from Beckett and a couple of blown saves from Papelbon?

If you still think this is a playoff team (and let's just say I think they are but am no longer convinced), you have to go with 2-8.