It is pretty much inevitable that the team would fall back this year...we just lost WAY too much offensive production and pitching to have a great team this year.
I have to say though, the first few weeks of the season had me hoping I was wrong, and I thought maybe Tony had somehow put another elite team together...but alas...Baseball showed it's cruel hand and brought it crashing back to earth..
I do however believe this team is actually better than they have shown the last month...we are a good team either way, but I think we could ge a really good team if the guys would just out of their heads.
This program as a whole has forgotten what it is like to struggle..to slump at the plate, on the mound and in the field...and all those things have weirdly happened to a lot of the team, and so it becomes a cascade failure....I've seen tons of good teams go in month long funks, but I've seen them flip a switch and right themselves literally overnight too.
It wouldn't surprise me for us to get knocked out the first week...but it really wouldn't surprise me for them to have one of those crazy couple of games where things just start clicking again for multiple players, and suddenly turns it around and go deep in the postseason either.
Tony will put more great teams on the field...I just don't know if he could ever put a historically great team like we've had in 2 of the previous 3 years out there again.
We have a ton of baseball newbs that don't understand how special those teams really were....just absolutely brutal lineups and staffs.
They are called "Historically Great" for a reason...they don't come around that often.