To the surprise of, well, absolutely no one, the Padres whacked second baseman Orlando Hudson on Thursday, sending him to the unemployment line thanks to a line of .211/.260/.317 and rumors of his unhappiness at his situation. At the same time, they placed Jason Bartlett on the disabled list with a strained knee that’s in no way as painful as his unbelievably poor .133/.240/.193 performance. Whether or not we see Bartlett in a San Diego uniform again — his release has been rumored for a while as well — it’s clear that the last-place Padres are committing to youth in the infield, starting with the promotions of second baseman Alexi Amarista and shortstop Everth Cabrera.

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Manny Ramirez is scheduled to begin a rehab stint for Triple-A Sacramento this weekend in anticipation of joining the Athletics on May 30 and… you know what? Let’s just get this right out of the way up front: Manny’s a cheat, a jerk, an abuser, and probably a number of other things too. Whatever you want to call him, it’s most likely true, and you’ll get little argument from me. That said, he’s also a bat with a Hall of Fame resume (if not, for various reasons, a likely enshrinee) and he’s available in just about every league with roughly three-quarters of the season remaining, so he’s worth checking into.

For the surprising A’s, hanging around in the race at 19-19, it’s not hard to see why they might be willing to take a chance here. Roundly expected to struggle greatly to score runs, they’ve done just that, as they’re currently tied with San Diego & Seattle for the second-worst wOBA in baseball, ahead of only the dreadful Pirates. Among full-time players – defined here as having 100 or more plate appearances – only the breakout season of Josh Reddick is anything more than league-average, as far as wOBA goes. The current DH tandem of Jonny Gomes & Kila Ka’aihue has been decent yet hardly irreplaceable, and with underwhelming performances from Seth Smith & Coco Crisp in left and Daric Barton at first base, there’s room to find playing time for those two elsewhere. Manny may or may not have anything left, but it certainly makes sense for the A’s to try at this point, and he’s expected to hit third or fourth in the lineup and become the primary designated hitter.

So Manny should get an opportunity. Great. Is there really any hope that he can produce? The A’s certainly won’t give him too long to find out, and May 30 is an important date; not only is it the day he’s scheduled to return, it’s also his 40th birthday, and that’s not exactly the age at which a hitter is considered “in his prime”.

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Take a look at the left column of ESPN’s Closer Depth Chart, won’t you? I’m almost terrified to mention any names, because based on what we’ve seen so far this year, it’s likely that some of these guys will change in the few hours between my writing this and it being posted on the site. But seriously, Rafael Dolis? Dale Thayer? Santiago Casilla? Steve Cishek? Casey Janssen? We’re barely more than a month into the season and the closer landscape is just littered with the corpses of injured and ineffective incumbents; entire drafts lay ruined in the carnage.

For years, I’ve avoided overpaying for closers in drafts, because saves can always be found, unlike harder to fill categories like home runs. Sure, if you’ve got multiple spots for relievers it can make sense to lock down one spot with an established closer seen as “safe” so you’re not completely punting the category, but saves will always present themselves – last year, 34 pitchers had at least 10 saves, a number which was 37 in 2010. If the theory goes that hunting for saves in the draft is rarely a wise strategy, this year is an extreme example of that, as nearly half the clubs in baseball have already made changes in the back end of their bullpens.

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Pop quiz, hotshot: without looking, try and name the three batters at the top of the MLB leaderboards in on-base percentage (entering Wednesday).

Give up? Well, Matt Kemp at the top should be no surprise, since he’s coming off an MVP-caliber season and just finished up one of the best Aprils in decades. David Wright in second isn’t a shocker either; after a few down seasons, he’s healthy and motivated for the surprisingly pesky Mets. And in third place… Josh Hamilton? David Ortiz? Joey Votto? All worthy choices, and all in the top ten, but if you really guessed that the answer was a 31-year-old catcher with 244 career MLB plate appearances under his belt entering the season, then you’re either an enormous Dodger fan or an immediate member of the A.J. Ellis family.

All season long, the common refrain around the Dodgers is that they’ve been carried by the dynamic duo of Kemp & Andre Ethier, with little support from the rest of the lineup, and that’s not entirely true: Ellis enters play on Friday carrying a line of .306/.449/.468. That’s good for for 1.1 WAR in just under a month of play, and the ensuing .392 wOBA places him fifth among all catchers, despite not having near the type of power you’ll see from those ahead of him like Matt Wieters & Buster Posey. After hitting a double and a homer off of Jhoulys Chacin on Tuesday, he’s now reached base in fifteen consecutive games, thanks in large part to his 20.2% walk rate, third best in baseball. (Lest you think this is a function of hitting in front of the pitcher, think again, because this is serious business; he even enters games to the excellent and appropriate “Walk” by the Foo Fighters.)

Yet for all of his early achievements, Ellis has gone all but ignored in fantasy baseball. He’s owned by just 4% of teams in Yahoo and a miniscule 0.8% in ESPN leagues, far less than several clearly inferior options. Those numbers are so tiny that it basically means that Ellis is a free pick-up in all but the most extremely deep leagues.

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When the Diamondbacks went out and signed Jason Kubel to play left field last December, many observers were aghast, arguing that even if he was a small improvement on offense over Gerardo Parra, the enormous gap in their defensive skills would make the transaction a net downgrade at a position Arizona already had depth at. For a team attempting to defend their NL West title, it certainly seemed like they could have found a better use for the 15 million dollars they gave to Kubel.

Two weeks into the season, Chris Young is on the disabled list with a shoulder injury, Justin Upton is doing his best to avoid joining him with a thumb injury, and the previously overstuffed Arizona outfield is suddenly an area of deep concern in the desert. While neither injury is expected to be a long-term issue, the Diamondbacks won’t have both players back in the lineup together until early May at the soonest. Young’s injury is a particularly tough blow, since the center fielder was off to a fantastic (if completely unsustainable) .410/.500/.897 start with five homers in the early going. As for Upton, he’s off to a horrendous start, still seeking his first home run and RBI, though the fact that he did pinch-run in the 9th against Pittsburgh on Wednesday does indicate that the Diamondbacks intend to keep him off the disabled list for now. Even if that’s the case, his thumb has clearly affected his play, so expect additional time off, diminished performance, or both until he is fully healed.

For fantasy players also suddenly down an outfielder – and you shouldn’t need me to tell you that Upton & Young are each owned in just about every league imaginable – the immediate action is to look internally, because Parra should now see daily playing time. He started in left with Kubel moved over to right yesterday, though expect him to see time at all three positions. In addition, 24-year-old A.J. Pollock was recalled from Triple-A Reno to make his major league debut. (For exceptionally deep leaguers, Pollock is a 2009 first-round pick who stole 36 bases in Double-A last year, though without much power. The chain reaction there is that 23-year-old outfielder Adam Eaton, who has done nothing but hit since being drafted in 2010, has now been pushed to Triple-A to take Pollock’s spot.)

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Like Sergio Santos recently, Eno Sarris has been placed on the paternity leave list. In his honor, let’s take a look at three babies on their way to the big leagues – a few prospects who are on the verge of big-league playing time not only due to their own performance, but because of the situation on the big club ahead of them. Everyone knows that Mike Trout & Bryce Harper are coming, so instead we’ll check in on…

Nolan Arenado, 3B Colorado Rockies

In 2011, the Rockies sent out nine different players to man the hot corner, from Ty Wigginton’s 62 starts all the way down to the one sole inning catcher Chris Iannetta received at the end of a blowout loss against Kansas City. Six of the nine – including the top four, who combined for 119 starts – are no longer with the club, a hole the Rockies attempted to patch over by signing 38-year-old former Dodger Casey Blake this winter. Blake was injured & ineffective in camp this spring and was cut before Opening Day, so the Rockies are limping along with utility infielder Chris Nelson & former catcher Jordan Pacheco at the position for now. Neither is hitting (two extra-base hits and three walks between them in 39 PA thus far) and neither has much of a minor-league track record to suggest that’s likely to change any time soon.

Nelson & Pacheco are just placeholders, however, and short-time ones at that, since the team is just marking time until consensus top prospect Nolan Arenado is ready to claim the spot. Arenado tore up the California League last year as a 20-year-old (.361 wOBA, 20 homers, just 53 strikeouts in 583 PA) and then impressed in the Arizona Fall League. If not for the fact that he’d never played above High-A prior to this season, he might have broken camp with the big club – a promotion many were clamoring for anyway – and so far he’s crushing Double-A, hitting .395/.477/.632 in ten games for Tulsa. While there’s obvious small-sample-size caveats in 44 Double-A plate appearances, the scouting reports and complete history have all been glowing.

Arenado turns 21 today, April 16. He may not get a call to the big leagues for his birthday, but you can bet he’ll be spending most of this year in Colorado, not Oklahoma.

Anthony Rizzo, 1B Chicago Cubs

All spring, we heard that the Cubs were really going to give 29-year-old minor-league vet Bryan LaHair a chance to be the regular first baseman, despite having shipped off flamethrower Andrew Cashner to San Diego to reunite Rizzo with Theo Epstein & company. LaHair suffered through a homer-free spring training while Rizzo impressed, but the Cubs insisted that Rizzo would be starting the year at Triple-A Iowa. He did, but then the Cubs went out and started utilty guy Jeff Baker at first base in the first two games of the season and in four of the first nine, as LaHair dealt with back tightness and sat against lefty pitching.

To his credit, LaHair has produced when he’s played, hitting .348/.423/.696 with two homers in the early going. On the farm, though, Rizzo has been the Matt Kemp of the PCL, already hitting five homers to go with a .520 wOBA so far. (Again, small-sample-size and PCL offense to be taken into account here.) If LaHair keeps hitting, he’ll keep his job, but the Cubs clearly hold Rizzo in high regard and didn’t trade Cashner for him to have him waste away in the minors all season long. It remains to be seen how they would make that work – LaHair does have some outfield experience in the minors, and David DeJesus could potentially shift to center if they trade or dump Marlon Byrd, though an outfield defense with both LaHair & Alfonso Soriano sounds hilariously awful – but with a Cubs offense struggling to get anything going, they’ll find a way to get Rizzo in the lineup if he keeps showing that he has nothing left to prove in Iowa.

Trevor Bauer, SP Arizona Diamondbacks

I’m not sure if there was a bigger regression candidate heading into 2012 than Diamondback starter Josh Collmenter, who was surprisingly effective in 24 starts as a rookie last year but who gave little indication based on his history and performance that this was something he’d be able to keep up over the long term. He was basically the Chris Johnson of the new season, in terms of “there is just no way that guy is going to be as good next year.”

While it’s been only two starts, Collmenter has indeed been atrocious, allowing 14 baserunners, 10 earned runs, and 3 homers in 7 innings so far. It’s been bad enough that Kirk Gibson announcing that Collmenter will get another start this week against Atlanta actually qualifies as news, because it was in no way assured. For a team picked by many to win the division this year and possibly go deep into the playoffs, those results are unacceptable.

Even worse for Collmenter, the Diamondbacks have a ready-made replacement in their own top prospect, 2011 #3 overall pick Trevor Bauer. Bauer reportedly came close to making his big-league debut last year and is now one of several hot pitching prospects in the Arizona system, along with Tyler Skaggs, Pat Corbin, and Archie Bradley. With Jarrod Parker off to Oakland in the Trevor Cahill deal, Bauer is the closest to the bigs, having stuck out 46 in 32.1 Double-A innings between his debut last year and his first outings this year. While he needs to work on his walk rate – 5.6/9 in Double-A is far from ideal – he’s the kind of high-upside strikeout arm that the Diamondbacks currently don’t have in the back of a rotation that features Collmenter and Joe Saunders. Collmenter may have just one more start to prove that he’s actually a starting pitcher worth hanging onto, and the odds aren’t good that he’s going to be able to do it.

Bauer may not be the first choice if Collmenter loses his job – Arizona could try to patch things over for a few weeks with similar placeholders Barry Enright, Zach Kroenke, or Wade Miley – though none of them are going to stand in the way of Bauer once Arizona decides he’s ready. By the looks of things, that may be sooner rather than later.

What did you know about Alejandro De Aza in the middle of July last year? My guess is, “not a whole lot”, if you’d even ever heard of him at all. For my part, I have a vague recollection of him jumping right from Double-A to claim the Opening Day center fielder job with Florida in 2007, which lasted for all of about a week before he broke his right ankle. He returned late in the year, failed to hit, and then missed all of 2008 after needing surgery on his left ankle during the spring. For most of the last three seasons, he’s been bouncing between Triple-A & the bigs for the Marlins & White Sox, putting up superficially nice minor-league stats (.309/.372/.479), but never getting much of a chance to play at the major-league level and largely settling into a career as a barely-thought-of Quad-A player. (Which is still nice work if you can get it, I suppose.)

That all changed last July 27 when the White Sox got involved in the Colby Rasmus/Edwin Jackson three-team deal, opening up a spot on the Chicago offensive roster with the departure of Mark Teahen to Toronto. At the time, GM Kenny Williams claimed that De Aza was getting called up to do more than just fill out the bench, noting that the ineffective incumbent in center, Alex Rios, was going to have to “take a backseat”. De Aza provided the margin of victory with a homer in a 2-1 win over Detroit in his first game and never looked back, hitting .329/.400/.520 with 12 steals over 171 plate appearances, good for a .401 wOBA and 2.8 WAR in barely a third of a seasons’ worth of play. It was a stunning performance from a guy who had entered his age-27 season with a career .242/.286/.325 line in parts of three big league seasons, though no doubt fueled in part by an absurd .404 BABIP.

For all that, no one was quite sure what to make of De Aza heading into 2012. Was he a flash in the pan, taking advantage of small sample sizes and September pitching, completely unsustainable over time? Or could be he the next Mike Morse, a late bloomer slowed in part by injuries who showed his skill at the end of one season before completely breaking out the following year? The White Sox made room to find out by moving Rios to right field, trading Carlos Quentin to San Diego, and mercifully dumping Juan Pierre.

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Among all the match-ups on Opening Day — no, not that Opening Day, or that one, you know, the other one — one of the more intriguing for fantasy purposes might have been Atlanta opening their season in New York against the Mets, despite each club coming off 2011 campaigns they’d just as soon forget. (For radically different reasons, of course.) That’s because it allowed us to finally see some real, live data on two immensely talented starters each attempting to return from serious injuries, Johan Santana & Tommy Hanson.

Santana’s situation is well-known at this point, so we’ll just hit on the basics. Once one of the best pitchers in the sport while with Minnesota, he joined the Mets after 2007 and put up two-and-a-half solid (if not quite vintage) seasons in New York before succumbing to left shoulder surgery that cut his 2010 season short on September 2. Santana never did make it back in 2011 despite several attempts, perhaps not an altogether surprising outcome considering that the surgery he required had rarely been performed on a big league pitcher before, with the procedures which had occurred yielding considerably mixed results.

Hanson is six-and-a-half years Santana’s junior and not nearly as accomplished, though his three short years in the bigs have quickly proven him to be among the brightest young pitchers in the game. Hanson’s three-year FIP puts him right in between Cole Hamels & Matt Cain, while his swinging strike percentage over that same period is equal to that of Zack Greinke & Adam Wainwright. The Atlanta righty had increased his strikeout rate to nearly ten per nine in 2011 before seeing his season come to an end on August 6 after shoulder tendonitis. He was able to avoid surgery, but did manage to further terrify both Braves fans and fantasy owners alike by getting into a car accident in February which resulted in a mild concussion.

So after months of speculation about whether either would even be ready for April and what caliber of pitcher they’d be after their arm troubles, Santana and Hanson squared off against each other on Opening Day in Queens. All things considered, their outings could hardly have gone better. Santana made it through five scoreless innings, working out of a bases loaded jam in the fifth while striking out five overall. Hanson took a shutout of his own into into the sixth, though that may have been one inning too long; he allowed the first three men to reach before being lifted for Kris Medlen, who retired the next three Mets with no further damage.

Simply by getting through their outings by putting up solid performances with no reports of shoulder pain, these really should be taken as positive outings. In particular, Mets fans were ecstatic about the return of their ace, and with how little they’ve had to cheer for over the last few years, it’s hard to blame them. But in the same breath, any exhortations that Santana or Hanson “is back” really needs to be tempered with some reality, because neither was able to get near their pre-injury velocity levels. (I especially can’t wait to see the back page of the New York Post when it comes out. Can you award a Cy Young on April 6?)

According to our own Jeff Zimmerman, Hanson was down 2.3 MPH from last year, while Santana was 1.9 MPH under his 2010 performance. Those are significant variances, and the readings can’t simply be chalked up to a miscalculated radar gun, because every other pitcher who appeared in that game showed velocity at or near their usual levels. Neither pitcher was able to dial it up past 90-91 regularly, with Santana down into the mid-80s by the end of his stint.

Now, whether that’s a step on the comeback trail or the new normal remains to be seen. No one expects a starting pitcher to be in mid-season form on Opening Day, particularly two pitchers coming off serious arm issues, and so as they continue to rebuild arm strength, it’s hopeful that at least some of the velocity can return with it. For now, keep expectations in check, because each will be handled very gingerly for at least the next few weeks.

When it was announced earlier this week that Boston closer Andrew Bailey would miss several months thanks to thumb surgery, most assumed that fellow newcomer Mark Melancon would slide into the role, given that he was relatively effective in saving 20 games for a lousy Houston squad in 2011. If not Melancon, perhaps Daniel Bard, presumed to be Jonathan Papelbon’s heir apparent before attempting to move into the rotation, would return to the bullpen to help fill the need. After all, most clubs can get by without their fifth starter to start the season, and Boston also took longtime starter Vicente Padilla north with them as bullpen depth.

But it wouldn’t be Bobby Valentine if he did things the easy way, would it? Despite the availability of these two viable options, Valentine threw everyone a curveball and announced that he’d be starting the season with 30-year-old Alfredo Aceves as his closer. Aceves was in contention for a rotation spot as well and was reportedly unhappy when he learned he’d lost out to Bard & Felix Doubront and would be returning to the bullpen. Three days later, with all of four career saves under his belt (three of which saw him pitch at least 3.2 innings) he’s now apparently going to be the first choice in the ninth inning.

If the move seems odd, it’s not just because Valentine had other potential choices; it’s because Aceves is coming off a season in which he was quite valuable to the Red Sox as a multiple-inning reliever, putting up a 2.61 ERA (though only a 4.03 FIP) in 114 innings across 55 appearances, including four starts. Considering how uncertain the back end of the Sox rotation might be with the untested Bard & Doubront pulling up the rear, having Aceves available to act as safety net capable of pitching multiple innings at a time would have seemed to make sense.

So can Aceves be an effective closer? There’s no reason to think he can’t be. Closers are made, not born, and Aceves has nice 143/50 K/BB and 3.87 FIP across 192.2 career innings out of the bullpen; while he’s not a huge strikeout pitcher, he does a good job of keeping the ball in the yard and limiting free passes. Besides, he’s 24-3 lifetime, which is only the best winning percentage of all time, so he has to be good, right?

(It’s here where I’m hoping that I don’t need to point out the complete lack of seriousness in the preceding sentence. But hey, I’m new here.)

If Aceves were to become a traditional closer, he’d probably be solid enough in the role, even though that is arguably not the best use of resources for Boston since he’d be throwing far fewer innings being pigeonholed into the ninth inning than he would be otherwise. Simply being the designated closer for the Boston Red Sox brings value, so he’s an obvious and immediate add in all fantasy formats.

Of course, “Valentine” and “traditional” are two words that are rarely used in the same sentence, so there’s a bit more to this situation. Valentine has already noted that he’d be willing to use Aceves for multiple-inning saves and that Melancon will get his share of opportunities when Aceves is unavailable, raising some concern of a bullpen-by-committee. Bailey will be back at some point in the second half of the season, and there’s always the chance that issues arise in the rotation, whether that’s Josh Beckett’s own thumb issues, Clay Buchholz‘ return from back problems, or Bard & Doubront attempting to be full-time starters for the first time.

It’s not hard to see the Sox needing another starter before Daisuke Matsuzaka is ready to return later this year, and if it’s Bard who falls out, that would not only open up a spot in the rotation but could also add another competitor in relief. Aceves may be an adequate substitute for Bailey, but the circumstances, competition, and his own good-but-not-great performance make it exceedingly unlikely that he’s actually going to hang onto the job all season long. That makes him a good short-term buy, though someone who is potentially worth trading at his peak if he is able to rack up some early saves.

Still, Aceves does have something else going for him, at least in certain leagues – his eligibility as a starter. Few things in fantasy baseball give me more joy than being able to find a starter-eligible reliever who I can stash in a SP spot every day, essentially gaining a free reliever by avoiding the waste that comes with at least one rotation spot every day. (Brett Myers is another good example of that this year; Jose Contreras was a great use of that role last year.) He appears to be eligible as a starter in Yahoo! leagues, though not in ESPN or CBS. Keep that in mind when deciding how much of your FAAB budget or waiver claim position to throw at him.

In 2008, Andre Ethier had a breakout season for the Dodgers, hitting .305/.375/.510 for a team that made it to the National League Championship Series. His .382 wOBA that year was good for 10th among all MLB outfielders, impressive for a player who had spent much of his first two seasons in the big leagues battling lesser players like Luis Gonzalez & Juan Pierre for playing time. The following year, the Dodgers made it back to the NLCS, and Ethier was a huge part of that success; while his wOBA was slightly down to .370 (which still made him a top-20 outfielder), he increased his home runs from 20 to 31 and left behind a string of lasting memories, since it seemed that every time you looked up in 2009, Ethier was hitting a walkoff and being mobbed by teammates at home plate. At 27 years old, Ethier had a career line of .291/.363/.490 in four seasons and had established himself not only as an up-and-coming star but as one of the few feathers in general manager Ned Colletti’s cowboy hat, considering he’d been stolen from Billy Beane & the Athletics when it became clear Milton Bradley had to go after 2005.

While the future may have looked bright for both Ethier and the Dodgers at that point, it hasn’t really worked out that way for either party. The Dodgers, saddled by the whirlwind controversies brought on by the excesses of owner Frank McCourt, went just one game over .500 over the last two seasons, not sniffing the playoffs either time. Ethier, while still relatively productive despite battling injuries, has seen his power all but disappear. A slugging percentage that was .508 in 2009 has fallen to .493 in 2010 and down to .421 in 2011, when he hit just 11 homers and had a .343 wOBA that barely placed him within the top 30 among outfielders.

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