Whenever I hear the old canard that “defense wins games,” I’m always reminded of the old Grass Roots song, “Sooner or later, love is going to get you.”I think of this because sooner or later, no matter what sport you’re talking about, you have to put points on the board. Why? Because it doesn’t matter how good your defense is. You can’t strike every batter out, catch every ball (especially the ones that fly out of the park), intercept or bat down every pass, or stop every running play behind the line of scrimmage. As the Boston Bruins have proven – too many times for the sake of sanity – this season, it helps to score goals, or touchdowns, or points, or runs, because sooner or later, they’re going to be scored against you.If you don’t do it, you don’t win.Today, the Red Sox – and a lot of analysts and commentators – are all aglow over the signing of Adrian Beltre because of how good it makes them defensively. And I’ll go along with that to a point. There’s nothing more maddening than seeing a nice game go completely to pot because the shortstop kicked a ball or the center fielder missed the cutoff man.But I’m not buying this theory 100 percent. Sure, the Red Sox strengthened their pitching staff by signing John Lackey. That’s potentially a pretty solid rotation, provided that one of their “Big Three” doesn’t become the 2010 version of Daisuke. If that happens, it could be too big an obstacle to overcome, given that the offense on this team is still a huge question mark.(And speaking of Daisuke, let’s not forget that if he, himself, wasn’t such a question mark, it’s entirely possible the Red Sox would have used the money they had to spend to sign Lackey to either lock up Jason Bay for five years or make a knockout bid for Matt Holliday, who just re-upped with the Cardinals.)So here’s my take: General Manager Theo Epstein’s pride over his much-improved defense is another way of saying “we couldn’t spend to bring the big slugger to town, but, hey, we did this instead.”That’s great, but there’s only one problem. I’ve been a baseball fan all my life, and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s this: There are two principal reasons you lose games (and this applies to any sport, really): One is that you cannot produce offensively when it counts; the other is that you can’t stop other teams from producing offensively when it counts.In other words, the way the modern game is constructed, you have to have a couple of guys in your lineup who put the fear of God into pitchers; and you need a closer who does the same thing to opposing hitters.And I’d say that, judging from the way the 2009 season ended, the Red Sox have a lot of questions to answer in both departments. Closer Jonathan Papelbon – in his free-agent year, to boot – needs to return to his 2007-8 dominance (the Angels didn’t seem at all intimidated by him).And the offense needs to find a way to hit above-average pitching – something it did not do in 2009 at all. Oh, the Red Sox have players who can hit. But they don’t have anywhere near enough good hitters who can take the swagger away from a decent pitcher when it matters most.For all of last year’s pitching, the Yankees won because their offense was unstoppable. Pitchers might have been able to get through it once, but by the second time, they ran out of tricks. That lineup killed all but the most solid bullpens, and particularly ate up anything the Red Sox put out there once the season got going.That’s why there was a parade down Broadway last November. And Theo would do well to remember that the next time he’s prone to crow about prying Adrian Beltre away from Seattle.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.