I'm with you on the fact that this signals that we'll end up with a starting OF of Ramirez, Castillo and Betts. I don't agree that Sandoval ends up at DH because his bat isn't good enough and a significant part of his value comes from his defense. I see a 5 man OF of the three starters plus Victorino and Nava. Nava can platoon with Castillo if he struggles against righties while Betts moves to CF in that scenario. In the IF, we have Sandoval, Xander, Pedroia and Napoli. Our backups are Holt and Middlebrooks.
On the 40 man we have Cecchini who will come up if there's an IF injury and JBJ if there's an outfield injury. Even when they come up, they'll only be backing up the backups. This looks like deep depth to me.
On the pitching side, I think we end up with Lester first. Then we package Cespedes plus a young starter like Workman for someone like Cueto or Shark. That gives us Lester, #2, Buchholz, Kelly and one of the kids as the starting five. The long man is the kid who misses out. Take your pick. I think Webster takes 5 and Ranaudo ends up as the long man/first back up. Rubby goes to the pen, where he joins Tazawa, Koji, Mujica, Hembree, Layne and Escobar. There's obviously room to add a stud like Miller and give Escobar more seasoning in AAA.
We would still have an excess of pitching in the minors with Owens, Barnes and Johnson ready to step up. One of them replaces Buchholz if he stinks up the joint this year and we don't pick up his '16 option.
The only one I've left out is Craig because it's a real mystery what his current value is. If he bounces back then he's Napoli's replacement. If he sucks, I see him as a prime DFA candidate.
The rotation might look a bit weak but there's room for the FA to play around there, maybe BMc instead of a trade for a #2 and Cespedes goes for a 1B prospect instead, which we need because the system is really thin on 1B kids. But either way, we will need to play our kids and see which one's good enough to start and which one isn't. We will need the payroll flexibility that comes from having lots of cost-controlled players on the roster. I'm hoping we can graduate four or five young pitchers this year because guys like Webster and Rubby are too good for AAA but haven't had enough time in the majors.