Doug Gottlieb- Colin Cowherd Lite?

Probably not. But listening to him is occasionally similar to being "in the herd." Today he was railing on the recently launched Tampa Bay Rays bandwagon.

Now, I'm not saying we should immediately cancel the rest of the season and crown them world champs. But I am saying that they look legit. Their run differential is solid. Their rotation is legit, pending Edwin Jackson and Matt Garza's abilities to continue being slightly better than mediocre. Kazmir and Shields will hold down their end of things just fine. The lineup is meh, but good enough. Longoria has been better than expected and may come back to Earth, but Crawford and Pena have performed well below expectations and could easily end up having good second halves. Their one real concern should probably be their bullpen, which is tenuously leaning on Troy Percival and J.P. Howell.

ANYWAYS- If you want to go ahead and predict that they're going to implode after the break and finish with 83 wins, I have no problem with that. Just don't do it like Doug:

Here's a dirty little secret about this team: they're a lot better at home than on the road.

Really? Wow. I've never heard of a successful sports team like that before. Forget all those nice things I just said about them- they play better at home than on the road! For shame.

Seriously, their road record currently sits at 19-19, so it's obviously not a huge problem for them (so far). Write this down and remember it: if the Rays keep their pace and win 40 road games this season, they're in the playoffs.

And then you look at their schedule, and you see that they play 17 of their final 24 games on the road. So I think that's going to be their undoing.

OK. I see that. I also look at the rest of the schedule and note that they will end up playing exactly 81 home games and 81 road games, same as everyone else in the league. They might lose a couple games on the Red Sox or Yankees during that tough September, sure, but by then there's at least some chance they'll be able to absorb that kind of rut and still make the postseason.

In conclusion: saying a team that's .500 on the road will not make the playoffs because of the disparity between their home and road records is dumb.

Also in conclusion: there's no point in really paying attention to a guy who got kicked off his first college basketball team for committing credit card fraud.