Season Preview: pastywhite tyrones

This franchise has given us some of the league’s great team names down through the years. This year is no exception, as the owner continues his one-man jiha--er, crusa…, no. Quest? Quest.--his one-man quest to shame a fellow owner out of changing his email sig. Let it never be said that this league plays for small stakes.

Unfortunately, this franchise has been less successful on the field, having failed to hit the board in any of the league’s eight (!) previous seasons.

However, like the cheesebird, hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, so let’s take a look at whether the pastywhites will break their mouseduck this season.

Infield

Tasty. Adrian Gonzalez is a trade out of San Diego away from taking over the universe, and there have been a steady drumbeat of rumors that he’ll join fellow tyrone Dustin Pedroia in Boston this year. That move would help both players, and give the pasties maybe the best right side of the IF in the league. There’s lots of speed an uncertainty over on the left side, with Jose Reyes’s thyroid and Desmond DeChone Figgins’s ballpark change gumming up the works. I like both players to hold their value, though, giving the team a metric fuckton of steals in the process.

At catcher, A.J. Pierzwhatever is just a guy. And by “guy”, we mean “dick”.

Outfield

It’s tough to think of a more disparate group of OF than Torii (Not An Imposter) Hunter, Curtis (Not An Imposter, But Also Not A Jerk About It), Carlos (Imposter) Lee, and Ichiro (Other) Suzuki. Granderson has a chance to break out in the Yankees new T-ball stadium, and Ichiro is coming off a career-high SLG. The one concern is that the team has hitched its wagon to some pretty poor offenses in Seattle, Houston, and maybe even LAA, which might keep the R/RBI numbers below where the team needs them.

Rotation

Fine at the top with Chad Billingsley and Jajir Jujrjejnjs, but significantly iffier once you burrow down to the Scott Feldmans and Jorge de la Rosas beneath. Other than Billingsley, it feels like every guy in this rotation is slotted one notch above his actual talent level. Of course, if you’re going to be weak, the rotation is the place to do it because of the inherent volatility of SPs. But this might be pushing it.

Bullpen

When you have only two RPs on your roster, and both pitch for the same real-life team, it’s safe to assume that you won’t really be making much noise in the saves category. We wouldn’t be stunned to see Broxton flipped at some point this year, since the team would probably only lose 2-3 fantasy points by doing so.

Outlook

The offense is sneaky good, especially if Reyes comes back at anything like his previous level, and the overall talent level on the team is definitely higher than in past years. But we just don’t see enough pitching to make a run at the board barring some lightning in a bottle.