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Forget Christmas—this is the most wonderful time of the year.

It's baseball season.

The smell of freshly cut grass is in the air, while the sounds of bats cracking and gloves slapping sing their sweet melodies across the most beautiful diamonds in the world.

With spring training comes the sense of renewed faith in the local nine. There are going to be seven new faces on the roster for the Boston Red Sox in 2012. That's 28 percent of the roster, to be exact.

Couple that with the new manager and general manager, and there are a lot of changes taking place this season.

The team has a lot to prove and several players have chips on their shoulders. Here is a look at how I see the team producing in 2012.

For the record, I will be utilizing the lineup predicted by the Boston Globe's Chad Finn, which I view as a fine assessment for opening day. Also, I will be using numerous statistics from my favorite website on Earth, Baseball Reference.