Entering the final week, the 2025 IT IS HIGH Readers Race is a dogfight

Remember last March? Of course, you do. The peace talks for Gaza. The peace talks for Ukraine. The tariffs. The wildfires. Mikey Madison. Katie and Orlando... Splitsville. 

O, we were so much older then, we're younger than that now... 

That's why today we ponder the greatest headline of March 2025: the annual IT IS HIGH Reasoning Readers Prognosis Poll, taken on the eve of the MLB opener - long long ago, last March.  

Yes, it was the chance to showcase your expertise, your intuitive genius, by predicting the exact number of Yankee regular season victories to be harvested in 2025. And vote you did. 

So, where does everybody stand? 

Entering the season's final week - six games left - the Death Barge has 90 wins. That puts Rufus T. Firefly in the lead, most likely to clinch the unfathomable prize of spiritual and emotional drool.  

As for the tiebreakers, Aaron Judge is currently sitting on 49 HRs, and The Martian, Jasson Dominguez, is hitting a rather nondescript .257. 

With a week to go, it's time to ponder our spring expectations, which, for the most part, involved visions of gloom. (You know who you are. And, alas, so do I.)

Generally, we foresaw a stark decline from 2024, when the Yankees won 94 regular season games. We anticipated a mediocre team, chasing the wild card (which, to be sure, has become what the Yankees do every year.) 

Don't shoot me, but I have a theory that will piss some of you off. Could it be that we - as masters of misery and sayers of sooth - are underestimating the Yankee condition? If you add tiebreakers, we are three losses behind Toronto (for the AL East) and two ahead of Boston (for the wild card series home field advantage.) 

But but BUT... what if the Yankees run the table? It's not impossible. Six wins over the cupcake White Socks and the phone-it-in O's. That would fetch us 96 wins, which practically nobody here - that's right, only Hammer of God offered 96 - thought possible last spring. 

Considering our record of despair, could it be that things are actually better than we think?

No.

Nope. Don't see it. No matter how you slice this gristle, Aaron Boone is still the manager, and he'll whip the bullpen like a dying team of sled dogs, until Luke Weaver's severed arm is on the ground between home plate and pitchers mound. We're still the team most dependent upon HRs - usually with nobody on. And everybody knows what happens when homer-happy hitters face great pitching, which is exactly what is coming.

Nope. I'm thinking 94 wins - congrats to Rufus - and a second-round October knockout. 

On that note, a special shout out to our three most depressed prophets - 13BIT, Stang and Hoss - all of whom pictured the '25 Yanks on a par with the Washington Nats. Congrats: You managed to make even Alphonso look hopeful. 

Ah, March. Is it my imagination, or did it seem happier? Here we are, the world smoldering, our cities on fire, the hurricanes are just forming... 

I say, let the staggering gloom of our predictions remind us: 

We're better off than we expected to be. 

Seriously. Nobody here thought Trent Grisham would hit 30 HRs. Nobody ever heard of Cam Schlittler, unless it was to mock the name. Ben Rice? We'd be happy with 15 HRs. Gerrit Cole was gone, and who thought Will Warren would step up? 

Listen: We're better off than we expected to be. 

Six left. Dare I say it... Ryan McBroom?