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Archive for the ‘Rookies’ Category

McPaper Names to Know

Posted in Rookie Of Year, Rookies, Rotisserie, ROY, Twenty Something Stars on March 2, 2025 | Leave a Comment »

Each year USA Today publishes their 100 names to know. These are the newcomers they predict will make an impact on MLB baseball for the upcoming season. I am going to list the ones available in my Dynasty keeper league.

26. Rob Brantly
33. David Holmberg
37. AJ Pollock
45. Adeiny Hechavarria
50. Jonathan Pettibone
53. Edwar Cabrera
54. Darin Ruf
58. Donn Roach
67. Alex Castellanos
69. Travis d’Arnaud
73. Didi Gregorius
76. Ryan Jackson
80. Tommy Joseph
85. Jerry Sands
90. Nick Noonan
95. Tony Cingrani
96. Justin Wilson
97. JJ Hoover

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XM Baseball Sport Radio

Posted in American League, Around the Web, fantasy, Minors, MLB, National League, Rookies, Rotisserie on March 8, 2025 | 5 Comments »

After being on Sirius a few years ago, I finally made it back to Satellite radio. This time on the XM wing of the company.

XM 175:

http://www.facebook.com/MLBNetworkRadio

http://www.Twitter.com/MLBNetworkRadio

First Pitch
Weekdays 7 am - 10 am ET
Jim Memolo and Rob Dibble

Power Alley Jim Duquette and Kevin Kennedy
Weekdays 10 am - 2 pm ET

Inside Pitch Casey Stern and Jim Bowden
Weekdays 2 pm - 6 pm ET, Saturdays 10 am - 1 pm ET

MLB Tonight (MLB Network Staff)
Weekdays 6 pm - 8 pm ET

MLB Roundtrip
Weekdays 8 pm - 12 am ET

Minors and Majors Grant Paulsen
Sundays 8 am - 10 am ET

Remember When Ed Randall and Rico Petrocelli
Saturdays 8 am - 10 am ET

MLB Roundtrip Saturday Grant Paulsen
Saturdays 1 pm - 4 pm ET

Baseball Today Holden Kushner & Jim Duquette
Sundays 10 am - 1 pm ET

MLB Roundtrip Sunday
Sundays 1 pm - 4 pm ET
Talk about the news of the day and get insight on your team’s roster moves from former GM Jim Bowden.

Home Plate Jeff Joyce & Jeff Nelson
Weekends 4 pm - 7 pm ET

XM 147:

http://Twitter.com/siriusxmfantasy

http://www.facebook.com/siriusxmfantasysportsradio

7 am ET - RotoExperts w/ Scott Engel & Adam Ronis
10 am ET - SiriusXM Fantasy Basketball w/ Dennis Scott
11 am ET - RotoWire Fantasy Sports Today w/ Jeff Erickson & Derek Van Riper
2 pm ET - SiriusXM Fantasy Baseball w/ Steve Phillips & Jeff Rickard
5 pm ET - SiriusXM Fantasy Drive w/ Kyle Elfrink, Kay Adams & Ray Flowers
8 pm ET - Fantasy Baseball Tonight w/ Craig Mish

Ray Flowers on his web site is offering free fantasy information

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Prospect Grand Prix 2011

Posted in Around the Web, Minors, MLB, Opening Day, Prospects, Rookie Of Year, Rookies on March 2, 2025 | Leave a Comment »

Unless your name is John Orelud, each baseball player has to go down to the minor leagues, and work his way up the food chain. It is not an easy journey for a player trying to force his way onto a major league roster. Every step along the way, the minor league players performance is analyzed and scrutinized. The players results are compared to the their peers in the current season, and historically to any player who has come through a similar path.

The game of projecting a player’s career based on minor league numbers is not an easy one. For every success case such as an Evan Longoria, there is another player on the other side of the spectrum that fools the critics. Anyone remember when third baseman Andy Marte was rated as a better prospect than David Wright? There are tons of examples out their of players who lived up to the hype, and those who were utter failures:

Jesse Foppert, Joel Guzman, Andy Marte, Sean Burroughs, Greg Miller

Todd Van Poppel, Brien Taylor, Darren Driefort

However, each year we pay attention to these players known as a prospects, phenom, young talent, the future, what ever name you want to give these guys. Some of these players make it, some do not. Another factor in all of this is opportunity. There are some players who did not shows up on the big time prospect lists and go on to have wonderful careers as late bloomers. Matt Holiday is one guy in this mold. Jason Bay is another. How can we forget Big Papi started his career out as with Twins? Johan Santana certainly didn’t start with the Twins organization either.

Now, one last thing that you can’t put a number to (at least yet) is a player make up. The player who has a good head on his shoulders and can get over the failures from previous day, and move on and get past the bad day is better equipped to be successful. The game of baseball is one of always making adjustments and dealing with failure.

With this mind, when you think prospects, think about the combination of talent, opportunity, and makeup. These three together give you an indication of what kind a player you have.

CBS Sports Top 100

BP Future Shock 2011

Baseball Digest Prospect Sandwich

Call To Pen

Braves Top

MLB Prospects

Prospect Watch Starters

Top Prospect Alert (by team)

Baseball America

Rays Prospect Guide

Jim Bowden Top 50

Project Prospect

Keith Law’s rankings

MLB Prospects

Prospect Junkies

Scoutingbook.com Prospect Matrix

Prospect Portal

Top NL Only Prospects

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Roto Ball is Back 2011

Posted in American League, Blogging, Rookies, Rotisserie, Sabermetrics, Strategy on February 17, 2026 | Leave a Comment »

With the NFL labor battle taking shape, the talk of any football is clearly on mute until that matter reaches a resolution. But, this just in: It’s baseball time again! As we speak, the Boys of Summer are on their way to spring training camps across Florida and Arizona. The pitchers and catchers arrive early, in order to get their arms warmed for the first game which starts on February 26th.

Over the next few weeks, the focus here at Baseball Happenings will be getting you thinking baseball again. Just like the players, managers, and the general managers, you have to prepare for the upcoming season. Fantasy baseball or Roto for that matter is all about making good business decisions.

There are certain strategies for the typical rotation drafts, and other ways for participating in a full blown auction draft.

I dabble in fantasy play. Or, you could say I live and breathe fantasy baseball. Each year I play in two NL only auction leagues. In addition, I am a commissioner for one mixed league rotation draft, and have a few other pending leagues that are getting started up.

Here we use both the traditional statistics such that are used in typical 5×5 leagues. As well, we make use of sabermetrics to help with some of the decision making.

Moreover, this year I plan on discussing some of the new strategies I have learned over this off season. These are ideas I have never used before, but have become educated on the new ideas.

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Prediction Season 2009 Begins

Posted in American League, National League, Opening Day, Preview, Projections, Prospects, Rookies, Rotisserie on January 23, 2026 | Leave a Comment »

The Baseball Insights site has unveiled their 2009 player projection functionality. For example , I did I lookup on John Bowker, and Daniel Murphy.

Over at Fantasy Phenoms, they have their prospect outlook by position .

The MLB Jerk has a look at NL East prospects.

The Grand Finale link of the day is Keith Law’s Top 100.

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Brignac and Bartlett Squeeze Play

Posted in American League, MLB, Rays, Rookies, Shortsop on June 7, 2025 | 1 Comment »

The Rays are off to their breakout season and a lot of their success can be credited to the defense, especially up the middle. In Jason Bartlett, who the Rays obtained along with Matt Garza for Delmon Young , the Rays have the defender they have lacked for a long while. He is helping the Rays pitchers numbers making the key plays, while at the same time not really hurting them that much with his bat. Though his VORP is low, I believe Joe Maddon is correct that baseball needs a plus/minus on how many runs a player saved, to go laong with how many he has given up. In my mind, this SS Bartlett should be kept around for a long while. But, In the same time, in AAA Durham Reid Brignac continues to develop at SS. Its a tough decsion on what to do in years to come. In Brignac, you are talking about 20 HR potential, while at the same time he plays solid defense. After years of underachieving and bad decision making, the Rays are the toast of baseball. Do you mess with success or do you start making use of your future chips in years to come

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April Fools Edition: Sidd Finch Revisited

Posted in Mets, National League, Rookies on April 1, 2025 | Leave a Comment »

The classic story of Sidd Finch:

Peter Ueberroth, baseball’s new commissioner, was contacted by SI in his New York office. He was asked if he had heard anything about the Mets’ new phenomenon.No, he had not. He had heard some rumors about the Mets’ camp this spring, but nothing specific.

Did the name Hayden (Sidd) Finch mean anything to him?

Nope.

The commissioner was told that the Mets had a kid who could throw the ball over 150 mph. Unhittable.

Ueberroth took a minute before he asked, “Roll that by me again?”

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Opening Day Highlight Reel

Posted in American League, MLB, National League, Opening Day, Rookies on April 1, 2025 | 1 Comment »

koufax.jpgLet’s just forget that the Red Sox and A’s game in Japan, and the Braves and the Nats game in Natiion’s Capital never happened. Monday is what we will consider the true opening day as we had the full slate of games throughout major league baseball.

The day started off with the Yankees season opener in the Bronx rained out. The Yankees begin play in their new cathedral next season. It must of been a real downer for the fans who held the final opening day tickets in Yankee Stadium. Instead, we were treated to the Tigers take on the Royals on ESPN. The game started out with the Tigers taking the early lead, but the Royals came back and the game went into extra innings with the Tigers bullpen giving way to the Royals first win.

If the name Jamie Shields is not a household name yet, may be some day it will be. As Shields, in his first opening day start, pitched the Rays to an opening day win in Baltimore.

The opening day for the Reds and the Brewers were delayed by rain. The Reds honored long time announcer Joe Nuxhall by wearing #41 on the back of all their jerseys.

It did not take that long for Eric Gagne to have his role as closer with the Brewers to be on the line. David Riske had to nail down the save in extra innings over the Cubs, as Gagne gave up 3 runs in ninth. The Cubs offense was anemic, except for Japan import Fukodome who had three RBIs on the day. Cubs got a nice outing by Zambrano who ended up having to leave with an arm cramp.

Brandon Webb of the D-Backs notched an opening day win over the Reds. Jeff Salazar launched the pinch hit home run to add some extra insurance, and Lyons surprisingly had an easy ninth collecting the save on 11 picthes.

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Baseball’s 100 names you need to know!

Posted in American League, Around the Web, National League, Prospects, Rookies, Rotisserie on February 7, 2026 | 1 Comment »

In 2007, USA Today Sports Weekly said the top 10 of the 100 names You need to know were:

  1. Daisuke Matsuzaka, RHP, Red Sox [ Gyro Ball]
  2. Matt Garza, RHP, Twins [ Traded to Rays]
  3. Jeremy Sowers, LHP, Indians [ 6.00 ERA]
  4. Stephen Drew, SS, Diamondbacks [ Nice Player]
  5. Chris Young, OF, Diamondbacks [ Nice Rookie Year]
  6. Kevin Kouzmanoff, 3B, Padres [ Dissapointing 1st Half]
  7. Delmon Young, OF, Devil Rays [ Traded to Twins]
  8. Jonathan Sanchez, LHP, Giants [ Non-factor]
  9. Kory Casto, OF, Nationals [ Sent To Minors]
  10. Troy Tulowitzki, SS, Rockies [ Rookie of Year]

The 2008 100 names You need to know

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    The Brien Taylor Award Winner 2008?

    Posted in American League, Around the Web, Bad Advice, Mets, Minors, MLB, National League, Rookies, Rotisserie, ROY, Yankees on February 4, 2026 | Leave a Comment »

    The fellows In Queens got me thinking, even though we seem to focus on those prized prospects. What about the real busts over time in prospecting. The Brien Taylors‘ of the baseball world:

    The Yankees were without the official services of George Steinbrenner who was serving a suspension at the time but through the media, Steinbrenner said that if the Yankees let Taylor get away, they should be “shot.” Taylor was signed for $1.55 million the day before his classes were set to begin. Further delay would have meant the deal could not be signed until after the school year ended, which coincided with the following year’s draft.

    While quickly ascending up the minor league ranks in 1993, Taylor suffered a torn labrum while defending his brother in a fistfight. Unfortunately, Taylor was never the same pitcher again. He was at Double-A before the incident but spent the bulk of the remainder of his professional baseball career struggling at Single-A.

    Looking over the Baseball America All-Time Top 100 prospects :

    1992 #3: Roger Salkeld, rhp, Mariners [about]
    1993 #9: Allen Watson, lhp, Cardinals [about]
    1994 #19 : Jeff Granger, lhp, Royals [about]
    1995 #2: Ruben Rivera, of, Yankees [about]
    1996 #5 : Alan Benes, rhp, Cardinals
    1997 #4 : Matt White, rhp, Devil Rays
    1998 #13: Chad Hermansen, 2b, Pirates
    1999 #7: Ryan Anderson, lhp, Mariners
    2000 #6: Ruben Mateo, of, Rangers
    2001 #6: Sean Burroughs, 3b, Padres
    2002 #9: Drew Henson, 3b, Yankees
    2003 #5: Jesse Foppert, rhp, Giants
    2004 #8 : Greg Miller lhp, Dodgers
    2005 #21 : Brian Dopirak, 1b, Cubs

    Who is your pick to be the bust prospect of 2008?

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