A Preview A Day Keeps the Winter Away, #13

For the month of March I will be doing a season preview, with a new team each day, going in alphabetical order by team so I can save the Yankees for last, because I am, in fact, that devious.

As this is a Yankees' blog, the previews for AL East teams will be more detailed than those of AL Central and AL West teams, and any AL team previews will be more detailed than NL team previews, save maybe for the Mets. Each preview will involve consideration of how much 'threat' a team is to the Yankees, for fairly obvious reasons.

Up today: The Seattle Mariners

The Mariners won't generally get the same reaction from Yankee fans that the Angels will, mostly because we can and have beat the Mariners when it mattered, but this is not a team to take lightly.

They have some weak spots (I'm looking at you Richie Sexson) in their line-up, but, they've also got Ichiro and Adrian Beltre, and guys with cool names, like Kenji Johjima (it's just fun to say!), who can also hit.

Their pitching staff, which was a large part of their undoing last year, is much improved with the addition of Erik Bedard (so they don't have to worry about having the bad Weaver), and J J Putz in their bullpen might be the most underrated closer in the league.

The Angels, for one, had better watch their back.

Threat to the Yankees: Orange, exercise extreme caution

This team has the possibility to slip under the radar, kind of like it did last year, and the Yankees shouldn't let that happen. They might not be up there with the Indians, Angels and Red Sox, but they are getting close.



Brent of The Bronx Block
will have a Mariners preview up a little later, he asked me to ask you to take a look, and so you should.