Other Teams "Ifs"

[Hoiles4Life]

For all the talk on here I see about why everything has to go right for the Os to have a chance, I thought it might be fun to examine what could reasonably go wrong for the rest of the AL East for them to miss the playoffs, or finish with significantly worse records than expected. I'm keeping it to 2 "ifs" a team. Here's my take.

Boston: This team looks pretty unstoppable, and it would probably take a set of injuries like they had last year to make them miss the playoffs. However, I don't think they upgraded as much as people think, because they replaced good players with slightly better ones, and IF key players happened to go down again like last year, you never know.

New York: I know we say it every year, but this team is looking old. They are dangerous, but IF Rivera were to drop off at the age of 41 (far from impossible), and IF CC gets hurt, their season could collapse. Their rotation without CC doesn't scare me, and without a lights out Rivera who can't shorten the game to eight innings anymore they are a much weaker team. I know the conventional wisdom is that they can just blow away teams at the deadline, but we thought that about the offseason, too (see Lee,Cliff for exhibit A).

Tampa: They have lost a lot of important players. They're in a similar place to us this year. So IF their young players can't take a big step forward, and IF Manny and Damon can't maintain close to their old level of production, Tampa goes nowhere.

Toronto: I already expect them to finish 5th this year. They had incredible luck last year. So IF they can't hit 250 Homers again, and IF they can't win 15 games against us, they won't get far.