The expectations for the 2007 Phillies, a ballclub written off until at least 2008 by general manager Pat Gillick himself after he unloaded Bobby Abreu, Cory Lidle and others, are not only off the charts, they are off the planet.
Former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan had a buzz-phrase for the bull-market mind-set that ignored the warning signals and bought up every overvalued dot.com stock in sight:
"Irrational exuberance . . . "
After Greenspan first used the term in a 1996 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, every global stock market fell between 2 and 4 percent.
So, when Phillies captain without portfolio Jimmy Rollins remarked last month that the Phillies are the "team to beat" in the National League East, the exuberance of my e-mail legion spiked like Google stock after a bullish quarterly report.
Players are notorious for tunnel vision, of course, particularly those going into their eighth season without playing in October. And what's not to like about a player pumping his own team?
Gillick reckoned after replacing Ed Wade, just about the only Phil with a no-trade, it would take a 5-game bump above 2005's 88 victories to make the postseason. Despite Howard's monster MVP season, despite career years by Rollins and Chase Utley, despite a breakthrough by Rule 5 steal Shane Victorino and an auspicious debut by wunderkind lefthander Cole Hamels, the Phillies won three fewer than the near-miss 2005 team.
If the Phillies had won that same 88 games, they would have been involved in a playoff for the wild card with the Dodgers and Padres.
Let's flash back to 1993, when I started the annual St. Pat's shot in the dark by picking the Phillies, dead last in 1992, to win the pennant. There was no wild card, so they had to win an East Division I felt was up for grabs. (The Atlanta Braves had not yet been blessed with a move to the East.)
