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In a situation where It's growing likely I'll face one or more calls, my M is very low (lets say 3-4 or <
, I'm out of the money, It's folded to me, I like 98. As decribed, your often (and properly) going to get called by any decent stack with any pair, any ace, any k-t or two face and better.
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Against that range, 98o wins
37.3% when called.
Against that range, A7o wins
44.4% when called.
A7o is called less frequently.
I do not understand why people are going on and on about how much they like having two live cards. Why is that more important than money?
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Without M's the question cannot be answered very accurately.
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This might be meaningful if you could point to some realistic M, and some resulting calling distribution, so that 98o would do better than A7o. Otherwise, it looks like you are stubbornly refusing to give up a faulty argument even after it has been shown to be wrong.
There are arguments for 98o. It does better than A7o in some multiway pots. However, for that to be relevant you have to expect to be called by multiple players a significant amount of the time, which means picking up the blinds is quite unlikely, and pushing with substandard hands is likely to be a bad idea.
By the way, there are much better strategies than pushing with any two in early position when your M is 3. It's a copout by people who don't want to be bothered by figuring out how to play well with a short stack, despite the fact that being short-stacked is a normal part of tournament poker, and that stack could easily represent more than a buy-in of equity.