For all the focus on getting a bat and the feeling that the Sox are wasting tons of AB's on pretty mediocre players - it's worth noting that this isn't terribly uncommon, especially among AL WC contenders.
The problem really has been with the starters. While a Quality Start isn't a terribly great statistic, the Sox are only getting one in 1 out of 4 starts, well below the AL average (33%), and better than only the Orioles (20%), and Twins (23%); and even with the Rays, although the Rays sporadic usage of openers skews this a bit.
The Sox starters are 39-35, which sounds not great, but is in line with Tampa (28-25) and the Yankees (31-31). Oddly , the Jays are an outlier; a rare AL contender with a medicore pen (starters are 41-31). Stros and ChiSox are really a step above anyone else (49-24 and 45-29, respectively).
What's odd is that the Sox haven't really had to go into their SP depth much (which is good, b/c they don't really have any), several of their starters have been crappy, but they've also taken the ball nearly every time out.
I've been thinking that the Sox top relievers are overworked, but compared to the other contenders, that doesn't really seem to be true. All the primary relievers on each contender seem to be in the same range of games / IP.
I guess this is a long way of saying that the Sox seem to have a lot of issues and they seem ominous when comparing to other successful Sox teams, but the game has changed a bit and when stacking up against the AL East contenders, the Sox are not in terrible shape and moving Richards / Perez to the pen for better starters should, at least conceivably, give the team a reasonable boost and if we can get anything in relief from either of these guys, it's gravy.