Second Opinion Player-Profile Game, Question #5

Note: The 1:30pm ET deadline has passed. All submissions time-stamped at 1:30pm and before will be considered for the 2011 Second Opinion. Those after the deadline will still be considered in the heart of this author.

A winner will be announced this afternoon. Thanks, everyone!

As announced recently, FanGraphs will once again be offering to the public its fantasy companion guide, The Second Opinion.

In the meantime, we’re playing the player-profile game that I intoduced in these pages last offseason.

The game is easy: one person (me, in this case) offers the text of single player profile, being careful to omit any proper names that might reveal the identity of the player in question. The other person (you, the reader) attempts to identify the player using only the details provided in the profile.

Today’s question must be answered in two parts, as follow. In your reply in the comment section below, please include:

1. The name of the player in question.

2. What you consider to be the most appropriate epithet for said player. Homer, for example, mostly only ever refers to the “wine-dark sea” or “loud-thundering Zeus” or “Achilles, breaker of men.”* What ought to be this player’s epithet?

*More awesome Homeric epithets here.

To win, you must provide the correct name and also the sweetest epithet.

The submission window runs until 1:30pm ET. Limit one entry per person. Winner receives free access to the 2011 Second Opinion.

Note: The 1:30pm ET deadline has passed. All submissions time-stamped at 1:30pm and before will be considered for the 2011 Second Opinion. Those after the deadline will still be considered in the heart of this author.

A winner will be announced this afternoon. Thanks, everyone!

Can you catch a rainbow and put it in your pocket? Can you snatch a butterfly out of the sky, and say to it, “Hey, stop being a butterfly for a moment will you”? No! Such is the [BLANK]… Even for those who weren’t necessarily swept up by [BLANK] Fever, it’s hard to deny the righty’s accomplishments in 2010. In his first season back from Japan, [BLANK] surprised almost every baseball pundit by throwing 200-plus innings of sub-4.00 ERA ball. Nor was it smoke and mirrors: [BLANK’S] xFIP (3.93) and FIP (3.55) suggest that the ERA is real. While [HIS TEAM’S] offense wasn’t necessarily a juggernaut (sixth in the AL by park-adjusted batting runs), [BLANK’S] 12-13 record was undeservedly poor. Come 2011, there’s every reason to expect a similar performance from [BLANK]. For fantasy owners, the major difference will be perception: [BLANK] entered 2010 a virtual unknown; he enters 2011 as a pitcher with a 1.71 ERA in four high-profile postseason starts.