"Buster" Is Spanish for "Glaring Inconsistencies"

Today's Buster Olney chat is a work of art. Well, to be more specific, it's a pile of shit. With apologies to the guys at FJM, who do a phenomenal job deconstructing Joe Morgan's weekly chats, I'd like to point out a couple of delightful items in Buster's chat. Before we get to the glaring inconsistencies, let's point to an excellent usage of a made-up word:

George Sherrill (Baltimore?): Hey Buster, where am I going to be August 1st? What should my O's expect in return?

Buster Olney: George: If I had to guess today (and that's all it is -- a guesstimate based on current conditions).

1. Milwaukee
2. Angels

Or 3. Orioles -- Baltimore just doesn't get an acceptable offer. But my guess is that the O's will deal him, because his value will never be higher than it is right now, and while Sherrill is pitching well and is a great, great story, nobody is going to forget that it wasn't long ago that he was an independent league pitcher; he does not have the pedigree of King Felix, as he would be the first to tell you.

Now, as any quasi-intelligent person would tell you, "guesstimate" is a word only an ignoramus would use. Whoever made it up thought she was being cute by combining the words "guess" and "estimate" into one super-word, but since an estimate is, by definition, a guess, there really is absolutely no difference between a "guesstimate" and a regular old "estimate". What makes this usage particularly delightful is that Olney is misusing the word even further by using it to refer to something that's not even an estimate. The only reasonable explanation is that Olney figured that since the words "guesstimate" and "estimate" are synonymous, then, by golly, so are "guesstimate" and "guess".

Eric (Appleton, WI): What are your current predictions on the playoff picture?

Buster Olney: Eric: They were so bad at the beginning of the season that anything I say now will have less than zero credibility, but hey, take them for what they're worth: Mets, Cubs, Brewers, D-Backs in the NL, Red Sox, Rays, White Sox and Angels in the AL.

I will give Buster credit for acknowledging that his preseason predictions were terrible, since some forecasters will just change their "predictions" every week based simply on what happened over the last week and make no reference to their earlier predictions (unless, of course, they happened to be correct). However, this blog is not about giving credit. Instead, I will just point out these aren't really "predictions", inasmuch as all of the teams he named are currently in playoff position. (Yes, I realize that the Dodgers are tied with Arizona and the Phillies with the Mets.) Now, remember these predictions.

Seymour, Brooklyn: Some of you "experts" never learn not to give up on the Yankees in the second half...

Buster Olney: Seymour: I picked them to win the division, so I'd hardly qualify as someone who has given up on them.

But, Buster, you picked them in your preseason predictions, which you yourself admitted were useless. And earlier in this chat, you picked the Red Sox and Rays to make the playoffs out of the AL East. In other words, you predicted the Yankees to succeed earlier in the season, then, asked to update your predictions, you predicted that the Yankees would not succeed. That, my friend, is the very definition of somebody who has given up on them.