When the original question was asked, me being a diehard Seahawks fans as well as a diehard Jays fan, immediately thought Seahawks! I’ve often told this to my father for years, that the Jays and Seahawks are the most consistently mediocre/500. teams in pro sports. The fact that another human being suggested the same is validation that I support two of the most middling teams in pro sports. Thanks, kinda..

Consistency!!1

a huge long shot but not impossible

It’s more the fact that the core they haven’t gotten rid of is aging and becoming less effective. Jeter had a bit of an offensive bounce-back last year, but was it a dead cat bounce or an actual recovery? Certainly, he’s more and more of a pylon on defense, and when combined with a declining A-Roid, the Yankees pitchers have to start worrying about ground balls to the left side.

The Yankees do have some nice youngish players, but Gardner and Martin are the only regular position players who are on the right side of 30 and only just.

… and assumed in my take. Replacing both performance and intangibles (the brand of Yankee ball for 20 years) is going to be hard for them. How can they find a closer anywhere close to Rivera and as productive a bat as Jeter and Posada at their positions? There are just a lot of questions there in the next 5 years that free agency and their minor league system cannot clearly answer for them. I would love to be able to run out 4 guys for a decade like they did and know exactly what you will get from them.

That’s a much more reasonable expectation than expecting an 11 game outperofrmance of Pthag expectations

No, I’m predicting that their run differential will be worse than expected but their W-L total will be way better than expected. It will be completely unprecedented (I assume).