SPECULATOR: Searching for the next John Lackey

One preseason exercise that we find useful is to take a breakout performance from last year and construct a profile around it that helps identify candidates to replicate that performance this year.

Our subject this week: John Lackey. The choice is not random, as he was one of our better preseason calls in this exercise a year ago, when we searched for the next AJ Burnett. Our treatment of Lackey in that column ended up being rather on-the-nose:

John Lackey (RHP, BOS) enters 2012 with near-pariah status in Boston, but the simple fact is that the Red Sox need him if they have realistic hope of rebounding this year. And there is some reason for optimism: while he hasn't reached our 90 BPV/4.00 xERA filter levels since 2008, his skill set...

Almost!

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