The Athletic's 2023 MLB predictions filled with more fuel for Yankees haters' fire

This year, to counteract their failures in 2022, The Athletic ranked a series of "deadly unserious" predictions for 2023 to be paired with their straight-across-the-bough ones.

Needless to say, Yankees fans will prefer Ken Rosenthal's unserious ones, even though he has the Yanks finishing seventh.

Hopefully, this year's expert panelists will be as incorrect this year as they were in '22, when they unilaterally missed the Astros as World Champions (duh!) and Paul Goldschmidt as NL MVP.

This season, you won't find the Yankees praised for remaking their rotation, extending Aaron Judge long-term or making the tough (and correct) decision to roll with Anthony Volpe on Opening Day.

Instead, you'll see them over-hated as if they were the dynastic Patriots, with their early injury issues somehow sending them way into the lead of the "Most Overrated Team" poll.

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Yankees voted Most Overrated Roster by The Athletic

Maybe it's the bias talking, but don't the Yankees feel ... properly rated to you? Very few people are picking them to win it all. Most believe they're the sixth or seventh best team in MLB. And doesn't that seem ... reasonable?

What do injury problems have to do with being over/underrated? Seems like a complicating factor, and something that would cause fans and analysts to lose faith, not maintain it. Needless to say, for the 10th year running, the baseball world is treating the Yankees like their fans have been spoiled rotten and need to be taken down a peg, rather than the reality: we don't win in October anymore and we're scared.

This isn't the Cowboys. No Yankee fan is running in the streets of the Bronx shouting, "We dem Boys!" Most fans are living the exact opposite experience: too pessimistic for their own good, despite 99 wins in 2022.

If anything, this Yankees team -- which added Volpe, a full year of Oswaldo Cabrera, and Harrison Bader/Carlos Rodón when they return -- is becoming less appreciated than it should be. Their 99 wins are widely viewed as a catastrophic failure. While weathering injuries, their pitching is as deep as it's been in years. If this weren't New York, and if they weren't the Yankees, this would be seen as one of baseball's strongest rosters. Instead, they're rated by experts as their fans see them: unfairly maligned. Good enough to win the East, maybe, but who cares if they'll flop in cold weather anyway?

This is not to say Brian Cashman has done an excellent job; he hasn't pulled off a pitching trade since Roger Clemens. This is not to say the Yankees deserve universal praise; they still don't use their resources properly and flex to the level of the Mets. But they didn't even receive multiple votes as a potential World Series champion, and the Mariners did? 25.80% of those polled believe they're the game's most overrated team (with the Mets in second)?! Worth writing on the ol' whiteboard for sure.