Recently I've seen several news articles citing what ESPN's Buster Olney thinks of the Tigers. I watch my fair share of sports but have to admit that unless the newscaster is someone that looks like Erin Andrews I tend to forget who broadcast what, where, how or why. I hate to admit it, but I don't even recall what Erin Andrews had to say about anything either.

Anyway, I'm definitely a big Tigers' fan and took note and was proud to hear that Olney named the Tigers as having the best starting rotation in the majors. He went on to name our infield the second best, primarily because of our offensive leaders at the corners. I think that there was speculation that he considered our outfield more or less worthy of a middle tier ranking of perhaps 11th thru 16th. Most recently, I was dumbfounded to hear that he rated our lineup as one of the worst in baseball, with speculation being that it would fall in the 18th to 24th range.

This sort of unhinged me and so, I needed to find out a little bit more about how much of a guru Buster Olney is. I found some answers at http://blog.pundittracker.com/tag/buster-olney/. There you'll find that Ol' Olney doesn't appear to have fared too well. If you had taken his advise and bet on the who he expected to win the divisions, playoffs, etc. you would have gotten back 14 cents. OUCH! The overall average of the pundits was just 67 cents, but the Bustermeister was at the bottom of the list of all pundits for last year.

There are some pundits that have had pretty good. To be exact, 12 of the 58 pundits were winners in their forecasts - returning more than $1 earnings on a speculated $1 bet. The site mentions that major league baseball is the toughest sport to predict, compared to the NBA, NFL, and NHL. I understand that - I haven't bet on the wrong winning team in an NHL game all year!

So, although I like the way Buster rated our starting pitchers and infield, I have to say his rating of our lineup seems off base to me. Of course, Olsenator does have that 14 cents on a $1 rating going for him to determine accuracy...