I voted “all of the above” with the caveat that that Lloyd McClendon
deserves little blame except for maybe buying into (or at least propping
up) the preseason hype. He let Felix pitch a complete game already,
which I never thought I’d see.

And if you blame Jack Z, then you
could also blame most of the other ‘experts’ and pundits who thought the
off-season moves were good ones. I thought they were pretty good.

It
really just comes down to the players. Pitching and offense are the
real culprits so far. The line-up – besides Nelson Cruz (and only
Nelson Cruz) – has been awful. Cano and Seager are both
under-performing. The rest of the line seems as bad as ever. The
bullpen: extremely disappointing. Starting Rotation: not good, but I
think will come around.

In other words, The Mainers player
strengths from last year have weakened, and their weaknesses from last
year have not improved. Yes, they all ‘should’ be better than this, but
that’s been the story with this team year-in and year-out for more than a
decade, and most of their history.

I selected pitching, but if there were a write-in category, I would’ve entered “overconfidence”. Let’s see how they respond to being chastened thus far.