We’ve been watching the Boston Red Sox try to rebuild their roster for the coming season. General Manager Ben Cherington has added two impact hitters, three starters and a catcher over the past month – all necessary moves after a last-place finish in 2014.

They also came at a price. The Sox traded away several players who were once considered important prospects to the organization. Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster and Will Middlebrooks were all shipped off as part of deals to bring in pitcher Wade Miley and catcher Ryan Hanigan.

Hanigan and Miley will be key members of the roster that comes together in Fort Myers, Florida, in February. They are players expected to contribute to the success of the team now. Players who have already had success at the big-league level with other teams.

More than anything, that will be the biggest difference between the team that gathers at spring training in seven weeks and the team that stumbled through this past season. The 2015 Red Sox will have a far more veteran team. A team expected to put its experience to work on the field in April and beyond.

Last year Cherington and Manager John Farrell rolled the dice with a group of young players, a group with enormous talent and bright futures.

A group with potential.

Trouble with potential is that it indicates some future greatness. It indicates that better days are ahead. For Middlebrooks, De La Rosa and Webster those better days won’t be in Boston.

By the end of last season Cherington admitted he realized you just can’t expect too many young players to develop together and blossom at the same time. There has to be a core of veterans to lead the way. There were nights last season when two-thirds of the starting lineup hadn’t played a full major league season.

That, combined with a rotation that saw 80 percent of its pitchers traded away in midseason, was a recipe for disaster.

Cherington’s experience from 2014 is that Boston needs more experience on the field in 2015. He’s hoping Hanigan’s presence will help rookie Christian Vazquez (and prospect Blake Swihart behind him) learn how to handle a big-league staff on a daily basis.

He’s hoping free-agent signees Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez can bring some thump back to the Sox lineup. He’s hoping Dustin Pedroia, Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino can return to health and be part of a deeper lineup.

All of that made Middlebrooks expendable. There are plenty of people who think the third baseman will blossom into a productive, everyday corner infielder with power. Yet the 26-year old had yet to show that potential consistently, despite repeatedly being given the starting job. He may have a great future in San Diego, but the Sox were done waiting for that future to arrive at Fenway.

With a better offense – at least on paper – Cherington didn’t want to get stuck with an inexperienced starting rotation. Pitchers like Anthony Ranaudo, Matt Barnes, Brandon Workman and Henry Owens are close to big-league ready. They just might not be there yet. The same could be true with De La Rosa, who has a heavy arm but had yet to show the ability to consistently pitch deep into games in the American League. And Webster, once thought to be the gem of the historic 2012 trade with the Dodgers, looked overmatched in the bulk of his appearances with Boston.

Last year the Sox got caught with too many young players on the field. They weren’t going to let the same thing happen to them on the mound in 2015.

The Sox feel they have a good enough team right now to compete for the 2015 AL East title. There may be chances to improve the roster before spring training. Regardless, Boston refuses to let a lack of experience be a fatal flaw in the season ahead.

Tom Caron is the studio host for Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.