So...anyone still have that opening day optimism?

[acemann]

yes, and the optimism is primary based on beyond this season

i mean assuming cecil get his **** together... and the rotation next year is

Morrow
Romero
Drabek
Cecil
Steward (he needs to improve, but i think he's shoe in for next year)

with a potential bullpen looking something like

Litsch
Reyes
Rzep
Francisco
McGowan
Jannssen
Camp

that alone is exciting

[kwamebargnani]

Did you actually expect them to compete?

[tsherkin]

F it. I'm still excited. I love watching the Jays, even when they suck. I'm excited about things other than winning, that's all. We usually keep it entertaining apart from those nights where we have impotent offense, but that happens sometimes in baseball even to the very best, most elite offensive teams. Just more often than that to us.

I can still get excited about watching Joey Bats or our pitchers or seeing JP develop, etc, etc.

Jays baseball is still fun, even with the threat of postseason impotence looming over us in our competitively-disadvantaged division and baseball admin being legendary ass-hats about changing ANYTHING.

[DonYon]

Would love to get Choo on this team somehow. He's exactly the kind of player they need.

Choo's son goes to school with my friend's little brother and they're in the same grade/class (although that was awhile ago, not sure if that's still the case). I'll try to put in a good word

[Raider917]

run Differential is still pretty high at +18. NYY are 2nd in the division at +5.

[Michael Bradley]

Run differential this early doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot though. Winning the first two games by 15 runs and then being in nothing but close games since kind of skews the differential in Toronto's favor. If the Jays lost today 15-1, then all of a sudden we "should be" .500 instead of whatever our expected wins currently sit at?

I don't know, was never a big fan of pythag or expected wins. You either win or you lose. No sense in trying to justify losing as luck-based when a lot of the things that happen in baseball are luck-based, positive and negative.

[tecumseh18]

Run differential this early doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot though. Winning the first two games by 15 runs and then being in nothing but close games since kind of skews the differential in Toronto's favor. If the Jays lost today 15-1, then all of a sudden we "should be" .500 instead of whatever our expected wins currently sit at?

I don't know, was never a big fan of pythag or expected wins. You either win or you lose. No sense in trying to justify losing as luck-based when a lot of the things that happen in baseball are luck-based, positive and negative.

As with any scientific theory, the empirical question is whether it does a good job of predicting wins and losses in a season. Do gamblers use it?

We all remember Hollinger's system having the Raps at 5th or 6th overall mid-way through the 2007-08 season. That was the year in which every win over a scrub team was an absolute blow-out. Interesting, but ignores a ton of qualitative factors that really shouldn't be ignored.