Sports Illustrated, in their 2007 Baseball Preview on the Phillies, seems to be of the similar perspective as this blog in drawing it’s pre-spring training ”final analysis;”

Scoring runs won’t be a problem.   Myers, Hamels and Garcia are a formidable top three.  If Gordon stays healthy — a must — and Gillick works a little magic in the bullpen, the long playoff drought just might end with a division title — or at least a wild-card berth.

And the odds, according to Craig of Fishstripes who cites the betting site Bodog on winning the NL East, the NL pennant and winning the world series are showing up sufficiently close that the Phils appear to be a respectable choice coming in at consistent 15/1 odds in Dec., 2006 and February 2007 while the Mets dropped from 6/1 in December to 8/1 in February.  Who knows where the Mets will be at that pace by opening day.  By the way, my AL choice for the series, those Boston Red Sox odds went from 12/1 in December to 10/1 in February.

But for all of the stats, all of the odds and how each club looks on paper, the important thing is how they perform in game situations with the money on the line.

The start of the 2007 season is about still about 7 weeks off and pitchers and catchers arrive at their spring training locales on another 6 days.  There’s a long way to go, but with powerful slugger Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, the abovementioned 3 starting pitchers and their supporting cast, the Phillies look mighty good at this stage.  I’ll stay with my Phillies, Red Sox World Series prediction.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Real-Time Baseball News and Commentary, Phillies and NL East, Analysis, Predictions, etc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.