Self-Congratulatory Out-of-Context Awesomeness

Remember that baseball preview that I was a part of over at Tailgate Crashers? Well, we're around the one-quarter mark for the 2008 season and I thought it would be fun to take a look at how some of my predictions are holding up:

"I really don't think the A's are going to be as bad as a lot of people think."

You'd better believe that I caught a lot of flak around the Crashers' water cooler over this one…but, who's flakking now? Your heroes are in the thick of the AL West race, running neck-and-neck with an injury-depleted Angels team. The pitching has been exceptional, so far, and the offense is just slightly better than league average. Baseball Analysts had a terrific post the other day on whether or not the A's could keep this up.

"[The Diamondbacks are] going to be scary good this year."

What's that? All the knowledgeable east coast guys at Tailgate Crashers who have ESPN's programming and news coverage tailor-made to meet the needs of their teams didn't see this coming? Really? They've outscored opponents by 50 runs this year and feature a Dan Haren/Brandon Webb/Micah Owings threesome in the rotation that's as good as any in the game…even if you have to stay up until 10:05PM to see them. Zing!

"The glorious decline [of the Yankees] has begun. Same team as last year that lost over 1,000 player days to injury in '07 and this already old team is just another year older and even more susceptible to injury. I call mid-80s in wins for them."

Any team that gives a multi-year deal to a 36-year-old catcher kind of deserves it when said catcher goes down after 18 games, kids. The rotation is home to just one dependable starter, the bullpen is only three deep and Derek Jeter has been pretty damn average. Sure, they'll be better when A-Rod is healthy and Cano won't be this bad all year, but still…I'm setting the over/under at 85 for wins.

Now, once more with feeling, kneel before Zod!