Miami Marlins by Marc Normandin

As with the Royals, it feels ghoulish and unfair to point out that their rotation is lacking. This should be a paragraph detailing the joy of Jose Fernandez, followed by a paragraph detailing the joy of Jose Fernandez’s fastball. It’s beyond insensitive to look at the Marlins’ projected roster and loudly wonder where the pitching is.

But after getting through what makes the Marlins compelling — the best outfield in baseball, give or take — it’s impossible not to stare at Dan Straily and Tom Koehler in the rotation and worry an awful lot. Wei-Yin Chen was too good for too long to give up on completely, and Edinson Volquez is better than his 2016 season, but it will take some monster seasons from the outfielders to make up for the below-average pitching. They're ticketed for fourth-place, and I honestly wonder if that's too optimistic.

That’s before you get the rest of the lineup, which has more question marks than the typical contender. How will Dee Gordon hit in a post-chemistry world? Will Martin Prado be healthy and effective? What happened to Adeiny Hechavarria’s bat, and is it fixable? Can Justin Bour be merely bad against left-handed pitching instead of interminably awful?

Still, it’s not out of the question for them to have five or six above-average bats in the same lineup if everyone’s healthy, with an MVP candidate or two mixed in, which means all it would take is some average pitching for them to contend late into the season. As of right now, average is something of a best-case scenario, which is absolutely unfair.