Is the core talent that impressive? They had five 2 win players last year, one of whom was traded. Hell, they only have ten 1 win players under contract. Can expect some improvement with Story, development from Casas…but let’s say this team adds Burnes, Drury, and say, Sean Manea or Ryu or whatever.
What AL East team would they be better than?
Offensively, I think it's pretty close. They should feel good about the next 3 to 4 years of:
Casas (obviously)
Devers (obviously, with the bat)
Duran (his year last year looked a lot like his high minors stat lines)
Story (at least in a Dansby Swanson kind of way)
Yoshida (with a year of acclimation under his belt)
Connor Wong (offense and defense, I think assuming he's going to be a 2.0ish WAR catcher is pretty fair, there may even be some more offensive upside based on his high minors numbers)
Rafaela (kind of like JBJr - who was pretty valuable for his cost controlled years, tons of it on the defensive side, obviously)
I believe in Abreu as he's hit everywhere he's been, and he hasn't been all domination against RHP and worthless against LHP, he's been pretty decent against same side. I don't know if he can handle RF at Fenway (genuinely, I have no idea) but if he can, you can feel pretty good about that, and then it's 8 of 9 spots.
The pitching for the next 3 - 4 years (based on what we have right now) is an affront to baseball and possibly humanity.
Everyone should feel good about Bello as an SP2 (or better).
Between Crawford and Houck I think ONE of them can be a useful back of the rotation starter and the other a decent bull pen weapon.
So yeah, if they can add two front line starting pitchers, they should be really good - but that isn't likely.
In a hypothetical situation of adding Burnes (and a 7yr/$210m extension) and Jordan Montgomery (7/$175m) I think they'd be really good.
Realistically, I'm hoping for ONE of Montgomery (my choice) or Snell (fine, if that's the route they take) and someone else in the SP3/SP4 vein with upside (Giolito, Imanaga, Stroman, some trade I'm not thinking of). But who knows if they're even going to get those at this point.