Yankees and Red Sox fans are also feeling optimistic as the season begins.
Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Baltimore Orioles fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys. This week’s results brought to you by FanDuel.
Earlier this week, we asked Orioles fans to think long and hard about where the team will end up finishing in the AL East. Did they do enough, relative to their division competitors, over this offseason, to at least hold their position if not improve it? On this website and elsewhere, there has been a whole lot of anxiety that the answer to that question might end up being no.
When it came down to it, were people willing to put that kind of skepticism or pessimism in their answer to the survey?
That’s a lot of orange-colored glasses involved. As you can see in the above graphic, it’s a plurality victory for a repeat as the second place team in the division, with an additional one-third of voters expecting or at least hoping for a return to the top of the division. Put them together and it’s nearly 75% of fans thinking the Orioles will finish at least as well as they did or better. That’s really something.
Not surprisingly, it’s a spirit of optimism that can be found among other fans in the AL East as well. Over at the Yankees site Pinstripe Alley, 64% of the voters are expecting them to repeat as division champions. In the Red Sox realm, they’ve also got a plurality of 47% that picked a second place finish. At least one group of the three of us is going to end up wrong and disappointed, if not more.
Today is the first spring training game for the Orioles and many other teams. The exhibition schedule will lead us towards Opening Day, which is now 33 days away. Then we’ll start to find out whose optimism had some basis in reality and whose didn’t.