If we are looking at optimistic scenarios, then we need about half the team to just repeat what they did last year, while the other half just plays to about what they are projected to do.
Team repeat, hitters:
Devers 271/351/500 33 HR
Casas 263/367/490 24 HR
Duran 295/346/483
Abreu 316/388/474
Team ZIPS projection, hitters:
Grissom 284/352/419 10 HR
Yoshida 295/356/457 16 HR
O'Neill 268/344/482 18 HR
Story 246/314/441 15 HR
Rafaela 261/300/426 15 HR
Wong 249/296/416 11 HR
That would be a hell of an offense, if it actually broke down that way. The projections for Yoshida, Devers and Casas are actually pretty similar to what they did last year, so they could fit on either team.
Team repeat, pitchers:
Bello 157 IP, 4.24
Pivetta 142 IP, 4.04
Crawford 129 IP, 4.04
Jansen 44 IP, 3.63
Martin 51 IP, 1.05
Bernardino 50 IP, 3.20
Winckowski 84 IP, 2.88
Campbell 28 IP, 2.83
Team ZIPS projection, pitchers:
Giolito 161 IP, 4.51
Houck 103 IP, 4.62
Whitlock 89 IP, 3.73
Interesting that for pitchers, we need more of them to repeat what they did last year rather than hit their projections.
But the big exception is that we do need Giolito to throw a lot of innings while being not too bad. That would be big.
The pitching will not have great numbers, no matter what. But they could be decent enough, when factoring Fenway's park effect, if it breaks our way.
It's not asking much to expect that a player either repeats what they did last year, OR that that they perform about as well as they are projected to by an impartial stats-based projection.
It's weird though that most of the roster needs to do only one or the other. Like if Giolito, O'Neill and Story are as bad/unavailable as they were last year, that would pretty much sink the team, but if they hit their ZIPS projections we should be pretty good.
But a lot of the bullpen is the opposite, projected to be worse than last year-- ZIPS has Jansen, Martin, Winckowski and Bernadino falling off quite a bit-- we need them to just be as good as they were last year.