When I sized up the Boston Red Sox before the season began, I made a couple of assumptions, which many others also shared. The first was that Curt Schilling was not going to be an important player this year, and the second was that Josh Beckett would continue to be basically the same pitcher he’s been throughout his young career – alternately brilliant, wild, and sidelined with frustrating minor injuries. As it stood, I thought the Red Sox had enough pitching to take the division, but that Schilling would be, if anything, a problem, and that Beckett’s biggest contributions would come in October.

Right now those assumptions are looking pretty questionable. There was every reason to expect Schilling to be done. He’s 40 years old, coming off an injury-riddled season in which he pitched 93 1/3 innings with a 5.69 ERA and, worse, looked cooked. He gave up 11.7 hits per 9 innings, and they were all too often solid, line-drive shots. The general consensus was that he had sacrificed his fastball – and thus, his effectiveness – to the baseball gods in famously pitching with a torn-up ankle during the 2004 postseason.

So, of course, Schilling has gone out and pitched like Don Drysdale, with a 1.93 ERA through his first three starts. In the season opener, he went seven innings in a brutal hitter’s park in Texas, then followed that with a pair of 2-1 wins, one against Baltimore and the other against Seattle. In the last start, he went eight innings, gave up three hits, struck out seven, and walked none – a vintage Schilling start. Most important for the Sox, his fastball has its old speed, he looks to have his old command and control, and in averaging 112 pitches per start, he’s gone a long way toward answering lingering questions about his durability.

Beckett has been, if anything, even more impressive. Yesterday he picked up his third win, this one against Seattle, and as in his wins over Texas and Toronto, he went seven innings and allowed one run. It’s a bit early in the season to proclaim it a real trend, but somewhat oddly, Beckett has only struck out 12 batters in those 21 innings. He doesn’t look to have altered his traditional and successful strategy of throwing high and low fastballs and mixing in a sharp, hard-breaking curve, but anything that makes him more efficient is a good thing, as he doesn’t need to go for the K on every batter, something he’s been prone to do in the past.

How much of a difference will it make for Boston if these two turn in ace-quality seasons? It’s difficult to say, of course. Even if Schilling returns to form and Beckett enjoys a true breakout campaign, they’re probably not going to end the season with sub-2.00 ERAs, and the difference they’ll make will depend on what you’re comparing these hypothetical ace-quality seasons to. Still, despite the evidence they’re giving for how silly it is to make assumptions, let’s proceed on two premises.

The first is that we would have expected each to pitch about as well as he did last year; and the second is that each will end the year with numbers like those the White Sox’ Jon Garland posted last year – a 3.50 ERA in 221 innings. That’s a very fine season, but not so fine it’s unrealistic to expect it out of Beckett and Schilling, especially given how they’ve opened the season.

Last year, Schilling was worth essentially nothing above what you’d expect from a Scott Proctor-type fringe pitcher, and Beckett, who turned in his typical 178 2/3 IP and 3.38 ERA (pitching in a good pitcher’s park in the National League, it should be noted), was worth about 35 runs. Garland was worth 50 runs. So, our ballpark expectation would be that if Schilling and Beckett pitch that well this season, the improvement would be in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 runs for the year – six to seven wins more than one might have cautiously but realistically expected before the season.

That’s a huge difference just on paper, and it doesn’t account for the substantial secondary effects of that kind of performance. If Schilling opened up with a couple of two-inning, seven-run jobs and then went on the disabled list for two months, for instance, his rotation slot would likely have been taken by Jonathan Papelbon, who earned his sixth save yesterday, or a prospect like Jon Lester or Lenny Dinardo, neither of whom are ready for Fenway. That would mess up developmental schedules, put pressure on the bullpen, cause manager Terry Francona’s Excedrin bill to skyrocket, etc. It’s painfully obvious to say, but Schilling pitching well is a very good thing.

The problem for the Yankees is that on paper, making the assumptions outlined at the beginning of this article, they looked to be about equal to the Red Sox. The catch was that while the Yankees looked like an excellent bet to win, say, 90 to 95 games, the Red Sox looked like a very good bet to win 85 to 105, depending on how they sorted through their tremendous infield depth and how their pitching shook out.

It’s very, very early in the season, and six good starts from two pitchers who are still, for various reasons, questionable isn’t cause to reassess everything we know about both teams. But it’s starting to look like that 105 number might be a bit more attainable for the Red Sox than one might have thought two weeks ago.

tmarchman@nysun.com