Save for the mug shot above this column, just about everything looks good on paper.

The 2011 Boston Red Sox look fantastic on paper. This team is jam-packed with talent, star power and postseason experience.

The projected 25-man roster has been named to a combined 34 All-Star games. A legitimate case can be made for four of the players being potential MVP candidates. Five of the starting pitchers, including Tim Wakefield, have finished in the top four in the Cy Young voting at some point in their career, while a sixth, Clay Buchholz, finished  sixth after last season. The bullpen boasts three former All-Stars, including two relievers with multiple 40-save seasons, plus one of the game’s most highly-touted young arms.

Put all that talent under the direction of arguably the best manager in Red Sox history and you’ve got yourself a potential juggernaut.

You’ve also got yourself a potentially frustrating summer.

On paper, it’s obvious that the Red Sox will be better than last year’s injury-riddled 89-win edition. That team stayed in the hunt into September with no bullpen and the likes of Daniel Nava, Bill Hall and Eric Patterson frequenting the starting lineup. Rather than wasting time entrapping Barry Bonds, the federal government should impanel a grand jury to investigate why Terry Francona finished in fourth place for American League Manager of the Year.

General manager Theo Epstein aggressively addressed the bullpen’s problems, acquiring former White Sox closer Bobby Jenks, who I like to call El Guapo Albino, former Rays set-up man Dan Wheeler and the usual collection of other teams’ castoffs.

More importantly, he erased the laughable panic in Red Sox Nation when Victor Martinez left via free agency by trading for one of the top young sluggers in the game, Adrian Gonzalez. Then he surprised everyone by signing Carl Crawford, a perpetual thorn in Boston’s side while at Tampa, to one of the richest contracts in baseball.

With Gonzalez and Crawford added to a lineup that already includes Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz, Jacoby Ellsbury and J.D. Drew, Epstein has assembled a batting order that is drawing comparisons to the championship lineups of four and seven years ago.

It could be a devastating lineup. It might even be one that is well-equipped to ride out the inevitable slumps of a 162-game season because it will be able to manufacture runs with Crawford and Jacoby Ellsbury creating havoc on the basepaths.

It’s also a very left-handed lineup, vulnerable against aces such as CC Sabathia, David Price and Texas’ Opening Day starter, C.J. Wilson. But that shouldn’t be too much of a concern until the playoffs, especially if Francona is willing to bruise the egos of Ortiz and Drew and sit them down against the southpaws.

What could doom the Red Sox before October, or at least have Sox fans turning to the agate page first when they get the paper to nervously check out the standings, is the pitching.

The front of the staff is more than good enough. Boston has a legitimate stud in Jon Lester. Not many losing streaks will last past his turn.

The No. 2 is Clay Buchholz, coming off a year in which he finally put together all of his electric stuff to become the top-of-the-rotation starter we’d been told he would be. Unlike Lester, Buchholz has yet to prove he can do it on a year-in, year-out basis, but he’s still likely to be one of the top starters in the American League.

Then it gets dicey, even before it gets to Daisuke. John Lackey starts the season as the No. 3 starter. His 2004 season wasn’t as bad as most make it out to be, but his contract leaves him open to such revisionism. He was what he has been for all but one year of his career (2007) — an innings eater whose record will be a couple of games over .500 at season’s end. He’s basically Wakefield without the gimmick pitch.

Josh Beckett drops down to the No. 4 slot this year, which is just another sign of the former ace’s disconcerting decline since August of 2009. The hope was that he would start to turn things around with good health this spring.

Unless he’s still feeling the effects of being hit in the head during batting practice early in spring training, he has no physical excuses. Yet his fastball is straighter and his curve ball flatter than they’ve ever been. At this rate, Lackey’s contract is going to seem like a bargain compared to Beckett’s by the end of the year.

Forget the contract, if Epstein knew back in 2006 that he’d be posting a $51 million fee just to talk to a pitcher who would be his No. 5 starter five years later, would he have done it, even knowing that pitcher would be 46-27 leading up to that fifth year? Who knows? Right now, he’d probably settle for a full season from Matsuzaka, who has made a total of 37 starts the last two years and gone 13-12. Few, if any, teams can claim to have a better fifth starter when he’s pitching to his capability, but that doesn’t change the fact that he taxes the bullpen even when he’s winning.

How about that bullpen, anyway? Jonathan Papelbon is close to being the relief corps’ own Josh Beckett. At least the Red Sox didn’t prematurely extend his contract. Cross you fingers and hope the fact that he’s a free agent next year will help him find the late burst that has left his fastball and a reliable second pitch.

Perhaps the presence of Jenks, Wheeler and Daniel Bard will push Papelbon. At the very least, the added depth should give Francona more options either to replace Papelbon or set him up, and he won’t have to burn out Bard before his 27th birthday. Hopefully Hideki Okajima and/or Dennys Reyes re-emerge from the left side, too.

Bullpens are inherently unpredictable, but unless this one can be as good as the 2007 pen, the Red Sox aren’t running away with the American League East.

Thankfully, the Yankees are old and have even more holes in their pitching staff, the Rays’ talent is depleted and the Blue Jays and Orioles are too young, so there is more room for error than there has been the last three or four years.

It’s still a tough enough division and the Red Sox still have enough flaws to keep things interesting well into September.

And with an injury here or there, or if and when the Yankees pick up a couple more starters, things might not look so good on paper, especially on the top left of the agate page, under “American League East.”