Opening Day

Today is baseball's official opening day (despite the Red Sox and A's playing a couple games in Japan already a couple of days ago). A bunch of teams kicked off their seasons- the Yankees have to wait an extra day because of a rain out. This means the last season opener at Yankee Stadium will be a night game- that's a little strange. Let me talk a little about the Yankees this year.

ESPN seems to hate the Yankees- no one predicts that the Yankees will win it all, only one person predicts that the Yankees will win the division. This is contrary to almost every SABRmetic prediction estimating that the Yankees will win about 94 games over Boston's 92- assuming the Blue Jays and Rays (no more "Devil") remain who they are, that would mean the Yankees are predicted to win the division by most "SABRmatricians". To further shame ESPN and their predictions, only one of 4 analysts correctly guessed the total average number of wins per team in 2008: 81. How do you not know that? Isn't that just basic math? Each team plays 162 games, there must be a winner and loser in each game, thus the average number of wins per team should be exactly half of 162- 81.

I'm particulaly excited about the Yankees this year. First, we have three young and promising pitches in Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlin and Ian Kennedy. As a Yankee fan, you have to be excited- this group can potentially end up as a Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz for us. Second, a we have a new intelligent manager in Joe Giardi- no longer will I have to wonder if the manager is asleep during the game. He'll manage the bullpen much better, using more than the 3 people Torre seemed to abuse. Third, the future is so bright I need sunglasses, but the present ain't all that bad in itself.

Like I mentioned, most SABRmatricians predict a very Yankee season out of these Yankees. At the very least, our starting pitching will be better. Wang and Pettite will be about the same, Mussina can't be as bad as he was last year (it was statistically a ridiculously unlucky year for the guy), and the combination of Hughes, Kennedy and Chamberlin in the back end of the rotation has to be better than the parade of mediocre-at-best pitchers filling in the 4 and 5 spots last year. Our bench is quite solid as well- Wilson Betemit, Morgan Endsburg, Shelly Duncan, Jose Mollina could all easily be starting on another team. Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu are all in good shape and seemed promising in the spring.

It's good to be a Yankee fan.

In the end, screw baseball, when's the NFL draft?