you need to have a good team
but you also need to be playing really good baseball at tournament time. Teams with dominant pitching will have an advantage over good offensive teams b/c good pitching beats good hitting and pitching doesn't have the slumps that hitting has.
We should be better pitching than we were last year as long as we can stay healthy. Hopefully, we won't need a Girodo type performance from anyone b/c the expectation will be that we have more dominant arms than we had available last year.
Offensively, we lose Renfroe and Frazier. Hopefully, the rest of the lineup will be improved and make up for their loss.
All of that said, we could have a better team than last year and not make it out of the supers. That is the nature of the game.