Coming into the season, we knew the team would be much improved but there were still some areas that were regarded as weaknesses. Even though Dioner Navarro had a great second half last year, his season will still overall poor and the catching position was not considered a strong point. Many people have felt that our RF and DH situation would be a point of weakness. With Floyd being prone to injury, which has been evident already, we did not not expect to receive too much production from these positions with the likes of Jonny Gomes, Nathan Haynes, and Eric Hinske running the show. We also had no idea what sort of production to expect from the third base position. We knew Longoria would get called up at some point, but we didn't know when he would get that call or how he would perform when he did.

At the quarter point of the season, all of these question marks have quickly turned into exclamation points. If you look at the team's production by position, these four positions have created more offense than any other in the lineup. The four highest OPS by position come from C, DH, RF, and 3B, with marks of .804, .795, .783, and .745. These positions haven't been played by Carl Crawford, B.J. Upton, or Carlos Pena, yet they have been at the core of the success of this offense.

Some people have given the credit to the pitching staff for the amazing turnaround, but the performance of these position players should not be dismissed. These were areas in which we were highly concerned, but have since become the cornerstone of our offense in the first half.