So tell me, how exactly are we in such bad shape as some of you are claiming?
Sure.
For starters, the Rays are in first place at 17-9 and we are in LAST place at 11-13. Thats LAST PLACE. After a brief flash in the pan winning streak we have reverted to our old form of beating the snot out of lousy pitching and being shut down by good pitching so that our runs per game looks great, but our W-L is worthy of being in last place. More importantly, there are only three teams in all of baseball with a team ERA over 5; the Twins, Milwaukee, and............US! The Twins are the worst team in all of baseball, and the Brewers are not much better. We are in the same class pitching-wise as those two teams: lower 10% in all of MLB. We have a bullpen that stinks, we have Clay Buchholtz, who has shown us nothing in nearly a year, and we have two inconsistent SP that are young and will be making mistakes that cost us games this year. And what's our record when we don't score at least 4 runs? Its 1-11. Thats because our pitching cannot compete with other ML teams.
I don't see any reason to be overly optimistic about this team right now. We will probably hover around .500 for most of the season. We just don't have the talent to do it this year. I wish it were different, but wishing for it does not make it so.