Foreword: A little background for the uninitiated. These lil team previews are my way of taking shots at your teams and poorly predicting end of season records. This has been made A BIT MORE DIFFICULT by this HELLSCAPE of a year but whatever, let’s do it again. 2020 should be saved on the blog for posterity’s sake. And yanno what let’s also consider these Preseason Power Rankings cuz why not. And since I decided to do this a tad late we are doubling up, 10 Teams in FIVE days leading up to the first full-ish schedule of games allegedly taking place on July 24th. In empty stadiums. So weird, so let’s get weird: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#10 Lakehurst Leviathans

2019 RECORD:  6-12

PROJECTED 2020 RECORD:  4-7, 10th place (0-1 Playoffs).  LOOK MAN, ya gotta not finish in last place before I project you to not finish in last place. Also your logo gives me “big into Asian schoolgirl hentai porn” vibez but that’s neither here nor there…

 

SHORT SQUAD SYNOPSIS, A LA THE SEASON:  Shane’s teams have always had a certain grace about them, in how they just sort of string together a bunch of un-sexy names around JD Martinez and then call it a day. I’ll get this caveat out of the way now and say that ANY PLAYER, and truly anyone you love, can be felled by this virus (or by car accidents, life is chaos get used to it)(RIP Jose Martinez 😦 ) so who knows how JD feels currently. And also who cares. But if he’s alive he’ll hit some Dongs®, Yasmani Grandal is sneaky good, Carlos Santana is a guy I’ve wanted to take off McCann’s hands for a while now, and they have a few bats coming off career years (Kepler, Polanco, a few people that aren’t on the Twins I’m sure) so if that continues WHO KNOWS GANG. Maybe not last place, for Shane.

If I had to stumble for other reasons to think maybe not last place, and really why would I because here I am projecting last place, but if I did: A few top 50-ish SPs in  Mike Soroka, Jack Flaherty, and Patrick Corbin. Counterpoint to suggest MAYBE LAST PLACE THOUGH:  The rest of their pitchers. Fuck ’em. I mean they have both a Zack  and a Zach that can’t bode well.

 

SHORT SEASON STUD BAT:  CF/OF Luis Robert – Luis might very well hit the ground running and become a Guy™ in the Backyard. OBP might not be anything to write home about, but counting stats might be. Plus worrying about rate stats in a shortened season may be bad business. But what do I know, all I’ve ever done in fantasy baseball is tried to look pretty while Odom made all our dynasty’s roster decisions (getting the first one out of the way before, like, Heroy can).

SHORT SEASON DUD BAT:  SS Jorge Polanco – We here at Backyard Views dot com project Polanco to turn back into a pumpkin, now that all PEDs have been thoroughly flushed from his system.

SHORT SEASON STUD ARM:  SP Mitch Keller – Mitch had a downright UNSIGHTLY 7.13 ERA over 48 IP last season but SURPRISE I think he’s much better than that. He was striking out 12 per 9 but running a ridiculous a .475 BABIP; FIP was actually a rather delightful 3.19. Ideally Shane is reading all of these acronyms as nerdy gobbledygook and I can have him as a TOSS-IN to that aforementioned Carlos Santana trade. Toss him in the way one might toss in a Vlad Guerrero Jr. for example.  

SHORT SEASON DUD ARM:  SP Mike Soroka – Do I think Soroka is going to be a completely useless piece of shit dud? No I do not. But to continue asking questions I will then answer myself, do I think he will keep an ERA under 3 again? Again I do not. Perhaps Soroka is really THAT good at limiting Dongs® but, dear reader, WHAT IF HE ISN’T? I mean he has been his whole minor league career but still, I expect SSS (small sample size duh) to wreak havoc this year. Throw in the NL DH now and that ERA may very well end up over 4….point….two. No more freebies for these pansy NL pitcher fucks.

 

Could I write more about Shane’s team? I don’t know MAYBE, maybe I fucking could. Could I have used less questions to myself in the writing of this? Absolutely. But the season is shortened and sort of ridiculous so these things are going to be the same. For example, last year I made sure all of the records were theoretically possible in the league with my math and this year I likely do NOT. Do that. CHAOS BAYBAY. Let’s get to #9….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#9 #Iwenttothegamean dallIgotwascovid19

2019 RECORD:  7-8-3 (X-Rayz)

PROJECTED 2020 RECORD:  4-6-1, 9th place (0-1 Playoffs).  This is partly cuz Odom GUTTED this roster last year and partly because you made me type out that fucking name. The pic is a favorite of mine but I also refuse to have that man’s face on here. DO BETTER ALL AROUND.

 

SHORT SQUAD SYNOPSIS, A LA THE SEASON ITSELF: This was going to open with some type of “Odom desecrated this man’s roster far worse than he ever desecrated this man’s sister” type joke but I love Annabel and wish her nothing but the best and I know Odom does as well and so we aren’t even going to go there. BUT FORREAL THOUGH, the reason why I half-used that opener is pretty apparent. This roster was managed a real zaaaaaney way and when the dust settled and previous ownership retired to a life of leisure it was left with like Jose Ramirez and…………………………Jeff McNeil?………………….for bats. I threw the new guy Jose Altuve because that’s what I DO, and everyone should be more like me and trading their best players all of the time (#DownWithDynasty). There’s also a buncha people left over from the speed heavy philosophy of olden days but I don’t want to talk about them, so we are done with the bats.

Unfortunately it would be far more difficult to find things to say about the arms. Let’s just say that Guy is very devoid of Guys™ so he’s got his work cut out for him, and I’m not sure if the shortened season will help or hurt in this regard. I do know that the previous regime would have made sure to have as many players as possible active for like the two games on 7/23 so maybe they can do that. I also know they have Aroldis Chapman at least, whom I’ll always love. He should trade him back to me.

 

SHORT SEASON STUD BAT:  CF/RF/OF Mallex Smith –A holdover from the Speed Killz days of yore, Mallex is the perfect time for me to dig into these FANTRAX PROJEXCTIONS for Mallex is projected to have the second most steals in alllll of baseball in this bullshit season. And dammit I think he might be able to do it. Which I don’t say about all projections, and I’m sure I’ll disagree with Fantrax far more than I agree, but here we are. Projections are just humans grasping at ways to pretend life isn’t chaos anyhow. ANYWHO Mallex Smith of the M’s is also projected to lead baseball with 4 triples, and if he can nab 4 that can potentially make alllll the difference this year. Like potentially the difference between sayyyy being the last place team and the 9th place team.

SHORT SEASON DUD BAT:  3B/RF/OF Hunter Dozier – Sticking with the Ftrax Trips Projections Theme, they’ve got Hunter here nabbing 3 and I knowww he nabbed 10 last year but Evan Gattis had 11 one year so….yea settle down. I don’t think Dozier is a triples savant and I also don’t think he’s a .500+ SLG guy. I think he’s more slug than slugger is what I’m saying here. Don’t know what else to say.

SHORT SEASON STUD ARM:  SP Ryan Yarbrough – Yarbrough, like many a player in the Rays org, got jerked all around last year due to the typical Rays fuckery. However, in between  “opening” and “bulking” and all of that bullshit, he was actually allowed to well and truly start a few games. Including 8.2 scoreless against the Mariners last August. Sounds like he’s in line to crack the “rotation” this year and perhaps even the Rays let him fly a bit and not pull him every 3 innings, and if they do so I think both they and THIS TEAM (I pray they settle in and change this fucking name because I don’t intend on typing it out twice…..the Redskins is now available I hear) won’t be disappointed in the results.  

SHORT SEASON DUD ARM:  SP Mike Fiers – These were originally terms “surprise” studs/duds but that felt too restrictive, but even if that remained I’m not sure this should necessarily come as a SURPRISE. Just in case it might, just in case a few good months with the A’s may have people viewing Mike Fiers with rose-colored glasses, let me announce that Mike Fiers remains Mike Fiers. Not particularly good for quite some time now, and with Ks dipping to 6.14 per 9 last year I say the margin for error is slim. UNFORTUNATELY beggars can’t be choosers so I understand hoping for a sub-4 ERA here. FORTUNATELY there’s still time to trade him to Mikey T, as he would like to thank Mr. Fiers for his service as Astros Whistleblower. CHAPMAN STILL HUNG THAT SLIDER MIKEY. ANYWHO Fiers sucks.

 

 

ONE DOWN FOUR TO GO.

 

 

YOU UNGRATEFUL “let me spellcheck this immediately” FUCKS.

 

Also welcome to the league Guy 🙂