FanHouse StevePearce

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the ...
Pittsburgh Pirates. I mean, what else needs to be said? They haven't been able to rebuild themselves properly in the past decade and a half. The relatively new front office seems to be headed down the right path, but it's early in the process. Fantasy-wise, you won't find much here to like.

There aren't many bright sides to being a Pirate fan. Generally, there's the early part of the season that the Bucs' have a chance of being above .500, the yearly brawl where the Cubs or Cardinals push the Pirates' to the breaking point and something ridiculous happens, and being hopeful about prospects. This year, Steve Pearce is the prospect of choice; having mashed his way through the minors to the tune of 31 homers across three levels last year. This spring, he's leading the Pirates with 4 homers. And today, he was demoted to AAA.

The Pirates' reasoning behind the move isn't awful. New GM Neal Huntington is looking to move just about anyone on the team with a pulse and he's hoping that a hot start from Xavier Nady or Jason Bay will lead someone to make him an offer he can't refuse and the ensuing trade will open a spot for Pearce. Huntington's logic is that Pearce is better off playing regularly in AAA than he is sitting on the bench in Pittsburgh.

The real question is how much a guy like Nady can be worth. He's pretty average in every single aspect of the game, except for hitting right-handed pitching, which he's much worse than average at. In all likelihood, whatever comes in return for Nady isn't going to go terribly far towards rebuilding the Pirates. Pearce, on the other hand, may be a legitimate corner outfield bat for the next several years. Why waste his 25-year old season in AAA without finding out what he can do?

Maybe you judge the beginning of fall by when the leaves start to fall from the trees. Maybe it starts for you at the first frost, or when your favorite NFL teams kick off, or (if you're from New York or Boston) when your favorite baseball team clinches a playoff spot. For me? It's when baseball teams make their rookies dress like retarded hookers and Wizard of Oz characters and then parade around to the airport.

Anyways, above we've got a host of Pirate rookies (Steve Pearce is in the stripper get-up with a peace sign on his head, Nyjer Morgan is in the every sexy Stripper/Apollo Reed combination, the other guys are ... I don't know who they are) in shots taken by an enterprising and well-placed fan at Gaslamp Ball. 100% Injury Rate has even more hazing pics including Joba Chamberlain the Cowardly Lion (awesome, awesome, awesome), Tin-Man Phil Hughes, and Teletubbie Daisuke Matsuzaka. And you thought being a baseball player was all fun and games.