Olney: Yanks Will Be A Surprise Team & Overachieve

7 Responses to “Olney: Yanks Will Be A Surprise Team & Overachieve”

1. yankees76 on February 29th, 2008 11:02 am

   Rather than criticize Steve for the views expressed in this post, I think I will criticize him for hiring staff who seems to share his same pessimistic view of the Yankees and their upcoming season.

   Do you realize that you just linked to a PECOTA projection that concluded that the Yankees will win the AL East??! This is news (or, it was when these projections were released earlier this month) because common wisdom is that the Sox are the defending champs and returning most of their team intact.

   But hey, rather than cite this projection for that truly significant differentiation from what we will be hearing over the next six weeks from media pundits and experts, let’s cite this projection for the somewhat meaningless purpose of showing that PECOTA believes the Yanks will win less than 108 games. Great. Thanks for that.

2. TurnTwo on February 29th, 2008 11:05 am

   the guys at RAB pointed out that Yanks Fan vs. Red Sox Fan figured out PECOTA stats to guesstimate the Yankees would win 105 games, and the Saux could win 103, and that was before Schilling went down.

   this post makes it sound like the Yankees are doomed to only win 95+ games.

3. dave on February 29th, 2008 11:55 am

   I think the point is that the yanks accomplished what they did last year with a total of 38 games started last year by Igawa, Rasner, Clippard, DeSalvo, Karstens, Pavano, Wright and Henn. This group also leached the Pen.

   Throw in guys like Mussina, Giambi, Farnsworth and Abreu in the walk year, playing for their next contract and there is a chance they could have up years over last year.

   Sprinkle in a TON of live young arms avaible via the Scranton shuttle for the Pen. (No Myers or Villione!)

   Alot would have to go right for the Yanks to win 100 games, but alot went wrong last year and they still won 94 games.

4. baileywalk on February 29th, 2008 12:31 pm

   Olney does have a point. People seem to remember 2007 for the Yanks — maybe because of all the issues — as a team that wasn’t very good. But they almost caught the Sox. They really should have beat the Indians (they would have if not for the remake of “Them!”), and I think they could easily have beaten the Sox had they faced them. Anyway, it was a good team that was brilliant in the second half and a large part of that was Hughes and Ian being in the rotation and Joba in the bullpen. Which we’ll have from the get-go this year.

   I know it might make Steve beat his chest and bay at the moon, but check out the Q&A Pete Abe and Phil Hughes did. I don’t know how anyone can read it and not come away liking the guy. There’s a lot of good stuff in it.

5. Rich on February 29th, 2008 12:49 pm

   Do you realize that you just linked to a PECOTA projection that concluded that the Yankees will win the AL East??
   __

   It does seem like there is a parallel universe thing going on here at times.

   I like this site because Steve finds articles that are hard to find, and there is good objective statistical insight, but to paint the PECOTA projection as a negative is inexplicable.

6. WW Staff on February 29th, 2008 1:50 pm

   “to paint the PECOTA projection as a negative is inexplicable”

   You’re reading something that’s not there.

   Buster, without science, on feel, is saying the Yankees have a chance to play .667 ball this season. As a point of compare, I offered PECOTA, which is more scientific than Buster, to show that 108 wins is not predicted.

   But, in no way did I offer, suggest, or say that PECOTA says the Yankees will not be good this year.

   People are seeing things here because they want and excuse to get on the authors of this blog - and not because they’re actually there.

7. Rich on February 29th, 2008 2:02 pm

   I think the problem could have been avoided if the entry said something like:

   For the record, PECOTA, although projecting the Yankees for first place, does not agree with Olney.

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