It's time, babies. It's time.

Time to wait until tomorrow...

Thanks to the stupefying greatness of Sean Forman's BaseballReference.com. we can now view the Opening Day starting lineup for every team, every season, ever. Here are Blue Jay Opening Day lineups dating back to that Opening Opening Day back in '77. Go take a look, revel in a trip down memory lane, then come back here and answer these questions ...

I like to spread a little Sunshine and Light around here from time to time.

Not always, though. Just sometimes

The Lansing Lugnuts and the New Hampshire Fisher Cats have announced their opening day minor league rosters and from that we can make some assumptions about the Syracuse and Dunedin rosters.

Travis Snider appears to be headed to Dunedin to start 2008.

Time to consider the local heroes....

We have optimism, we have pessimism. We have faith, we have skepticism. We have - ahem - covered many of the bases.

A look at JP Ricciardi from Jeff Blair.  A pretty good & fair article.

Do we really need a preview? They're better than the Athletics, Mariners and Rangers. Again. They're worse than the Red Sox, Yankees, Tigers, and Cleveland. Again. They will make the playoffs. Again. They will be a fashionable sleeper pick on account of their good starting pitching and general fundamental soundness. Again. But although anything can happen in the playoffs, no amount of fashionableness can overcome the fact that Anaheim's OBP skills are usually a teensy bit subpar by AL playoff standards. Chances are they'll just get rolled by the dreaded Red Sox in the first round. Again.

Fortunately, the AL West is a foregone conclusion. Unless the Angels' top pitchers all get hurt or something.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow (where's that Global Warming we keep hearing about anyway) would prevent Liam from delivering his Giants preview. Although a cranky Internet connection delayed it somewhat.

Take it away...

Sort of.

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I recall when the NL expanded in 1993 and created the Rockies and Marlins. It had been announced a couple of years before, and the idea intrigued me so much that my dad actually hunted down a Rockies' T-shirt for me in about 1991. The thing was pretty much worn out before the team played its first game. I guess the thing that captured my imagination was that there hadn't been any expansion since the '70s (the longest MLB had gone without expanding since they started expanding in the '60s), and that was before I was paying much attention to baseball.

(I also remember the FAN radio station broadcasting the expansion draft for the Rockies and Marlins. Dan Shulman was one of the guys doing commentary, and when Colorado drafted Kevin Reimer, Shulman said something like, “I don’t understand this at all. This is a National League team, and Reimer couldn’t catch the ball if you handed it to him.”)

Then I got over it.

San Diego has their own version of the Killer B’s with its (army) bases, beaches and babes. However, the Padres could possibly use a version of Houston’s Killer B’s from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, as this San Diego team will rely heavily on pitching and may need an unexpected offensive performance or two to make the playoffs. Or at least that’s the common perception, with their outfield considered one of the worst in the majors. If nothing else Padres fans can take comfort in knowing that whatever happens, it will be tough for 2008 to duplicate the heartbreak of 2007 when the team missed the playoffs due to an unlikely triple by Milwaukee Brewer Anthony Gwynn Jr., son of Padres icon Tony Gwynn, and a phantom tag of home plate by Matt Holliday.

No real surprises with the team to start the season.  Rolen and Ryan start the year on the DL and Buck Coats and Rule 5 pick Randy Wells benefit from that.

Joey Gathright is on the Royals and you know what that means!

The Arizona Diamondbacks surprised a lot of people with their first place finish in the NL West last year.  This season they should again be in good position to take the division over the Dodgers and the Padres.

Playing in New York, or in the New York minor league system, puts a different spin on a player's career right from the outset. It's almost impossible to arrive on the scene "quietly" -- though Robinson Cano, Chien-Ming Wang and Melky Cabrera have done as fair an imitation of that as anyone recently. Uusally it's all magazine covers and impossibly early Hall of Fame projections (are you listening, Joba Chamberlain and Philip Hughes?) ...

And besides, the Yankees are better known for huge splashy freeagent signings and player acquisitions (heads up, Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu). Hey, Andy Pettitte has even managed to fill both of those roles -- young farm system product and returning veteran hero -- in his career, before and after the train stop in Houston.

So what does all this have to do with previewing the 2008 season for the Yankees? Well, fans tend to split pretty black-and-white into "I love the Yankees" and "I hate the Yankees" (with very little in between), so let's change the face of the Great American Baseball Franchise & Dynasty-Maker and take a look at what we can learn about the team from the greatness of Sean Forman's BaseballReference.com ...