Your Week 2 Fan Confidence Booms And Busts

And we’re back for week 2! In case you missed what this is all about, here’s last week’s kickoff post. In short, here we take a look at which teams’ fan bases have seen their confidence increase or decrease to the greatest degrees over the course of the past week of play. As a professional sportswriter who is also a professional understander of collective human psychology, I am easily the most qualified person you know to speak to this topic.

Fan Confidence Booms

Without cheating, which team do you think has the biggest division lead in baseball as of right now? If you guessed the Colorado Rockies, congratulations, you’re familiar with header and body agreement. As of this writing, the Rockies have won four in a row, and their pitching staff has an ERA near 3 without getting anything from Ubaldo Jimenez. I don’t think Rockies fans are ever lacking for confidence, but right now they have even more than they usually do.

The A’s struggled out of the gate, but they’ve gone 5-2 over the past week, winning three games by one run, one game by two runs, and one game by three runs in extra innings. And now Texas’ Josh Hamilton is injured, which opens the door for the A’s to make a charge so long as Kevin Kouzmanoff stops treating the baseball like it’s a bitey parrot.

Even without Zack Greinke, the Brewers have already thrown three shutouts, with Chris Narveson having allowed zero runs in 13 innings. Further development by Narveson could eventually give the Brewers a fearsome front four, and if we learned anything over the offseason, it’s that baseball fans really love their fearsome front fours.

I had the privilege of attending the Seattle Mariners’ home opener in which the Indians held an 11-0 lead in the fourth inning. Based on that game alone the Indians are worth taking seriously in a flawed division, and even though they’ve lost two in a row, they’ve only allowed 20 runs in their past ten games since a dreary start. If they’ve actually fashioned a reasonable pitching staff out of that host of nobodies, who’s to say how far they can go?

It’s not like the Rays have been playing outstanding baseball, but their offense has finally woken up, and they did complete a brief two-game sweep in Boston. Rays fans are currently celebrating the signs of a return to competitive normalcy.

Fan Confidence Busts

It’s not just that the Rangers have suffered some frustrating late losses - the Hamilton injury is the bigger deal, here. Hamilton’s the team’s best player, and now they’ll be without him for up to two months. The Rangers came into the year as the AL West favorites, vulnerable only in the event of some injuries. Hamilton’s is the first of them, and that’s reason for concern. The Rangers’ unbeatability is a thing of the past.

The Mets have lost six of seven, allowing 50 runs over that span. Terry Collins just held a team meeting. When it’s the second week of a season, and your manager already has to call a team meeting, the season probably isn’t going so hot.

The White Sox haven’t actually been playing bad baseball, but out of the team’s five losses, the bullpen has been charged with a blown save in four of them. Were it not for Matt Thornton and Chris Sale, the team might already be running away with the Central, but instead they’re hanging out with the rest of the pack, feeling uneasy whenever a game proceeds to the later innings. It’s hard to feel confident when any win feels like a relief.

The hot start was probably fun, but welcome back, you guys.

The Jays were an eighth inning rally away from getting swept by the Mariners, and on Monday the bullpen somehow managed to throw away a 7-0 lead. These are the days when Toronto is supposed to be sprinting out of the gate so they can build up a big buffer that they then slowly give away over the final five months. Right now, the buffer doesn’t exist. The Jays are messing with my idea of their identity.