If you compare this Philly run to the Schmidt-Carlton teams, the current team looks more like 1983. A team that was too old but somehow got the job done. Not that it's likely, but certainly possible.

This entire column could easily be replaced by this.

Will any of these people writing "mean poopyheads pick my team to do poorly and they are so stoopid!" going to write "wow, those guys I said were idiots back in March actually were right on point. My team sucked this year" articles?

Never Jose. That's the time for rationalizing. "Nobody could have forseen the freak injuries suffered by X or Y, or that Z suffered through the worst season of his career after his wife ran off with the hot dog vender. If not for those events, which these supposedly smart analysts did NOT predict, the team would have won 10-15 more games and been right in the thick of a pennant race."

If they can stay within a half-dozen games of first place for most of the season and play their best baseball in September, they, too, can find themselves in another World Series.

Which could be said about any team, in any year, in any city. Really. Even the Astros.

If they can stay within a half-dozen games of first place for most of the season and play their best baseball in September, they, too, can find themselves in another World Series.

This is where the Cubs always go wrong -- they save their best baseball for November.

If they can stay within a half-dozen games of first place for most of the season and play their best baseball in September, they, too, can find themselves in another World Series.

Yes, and here's a good way to make that happen: have the third base coach flash the home run sign more often.

Will any of these people writing "mean poopyheads pick my team to do poorly and they are so stoopid!" going to write "wow, those guys I said were idiots back in March actually were right on point. My team sucked this year" articles?

I didn't get that vibe from this article. Just that the Phillies "Could" do better than expected. After all the experts were wrong last year about the Phillies, no reason to think they would be right this year.

As a fan of a team, when my team is picked to do poorly (or picked on) I'm going to look for the positives that I can find on the team and look at the negatives and try to rationalize whether the negatives are overstated or easily fixed by what is available/waiting.

Yes if the predictions pan out to be true, I'll be upset at the end of the year, but there I would be more into looking at "what went wrong" over a mea culpa type of thing.

Kashatus is basically a historian. In addition to political history works, he wrote a great book about Pete Gray, he followed that up with a book about players from Northeast PA in general, he wrote a book about the '64 Phils collapse, he wrote a book about the 1980 team. Phillies-related books have proliferated in the last few years, while I could barely find a couple good ones when they still played at the Vet.

I don't know why publications get him to write things like this.

I don't know why publications get him to write things like this.

Money? I have his book about the Dick Allen Phillies, but IIRC, it was from a university press and he probably didn't make much off of it.