The Rockies came to town, and with them they brought their enigmatic center fielder. Dexter Fowler is dripping with tools, but has averaged about seven homers and 16 steals per season to go along with his .272 career batting average to date. Ostensibly, I was asking Fowler about baseball. But I couldn’t help it. I ended up asking him about fantasy baseball, and his prospects of breaking out this year.

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It’s another week of recommending mediocre players who might just be less crappy than the rest of the fish in your free agent pool. Or, you could just stream any hitter facing Roy Halladay.

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A week into the season is a good time to check in on the states of platoons around the league. A strict platoon makes for easy lineup setting and under-rated value in deep leagues with deep benches, but for the mixed leaguers among us, we’re probably looking for a player to transcend their platoon splits and play every day. With that in mind, let’s check in on some situations that might be in flux.

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I asked. You answered. Who knew the most commented on post with my byline would be a poll about OBP leagues? Over 1,000 of you play in leagues that count OBP in some way or another. So that means I will be publishing articles specifically focusing on players in this scoring format. Today I will identify a couple of hitters who may be available in your league and gain value when OBP, rather than AVG, is a category.

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After getting off to a red hot start last week with four home runs, a .370 average and a stolen base to boot, Dexter Fowler is a player getting and deserving of a lot of fantasy love. The question is whether the slender center fielder can keep the offense up after hitting only 29 home runs in four seasons before his hot first week.
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In truth, I am not in favor of a lot of roster movement this early in the game. Unless you totally botched a series of draft picks or have gotten hit early and hard by the injury bug, I’m more of a “trust your draft instincts and let the team marinate for a little while before you start the overhaul” type guy. But between the possible bad luck and all the jumpers out there, there is an early call for waiver wire suggestions. Since I won’t encourage the jumpers, this week’s waiver piece from me will focus on replacing the injured Ryan Ludwick who dislocated his shoulder and will now be out for three months. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the deep league waiver wire. Join me every Wednesday morning decked out in your scuba gear ready to dive into the free agent pool searching for hidden treasure. I have limited the pool of players to those owned in 10% or less in CBS leagues, which should be deep enough for most. Unfortunately, Only leaguers sometimes have to choose between any Major Leaguer with a roster spot or going empty, so it’s a much easier decision!

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The glut of Spring Training injuries is, by definition, behind us, which means in-season injuries are the order of the day. Opening Night came and went without anything notable happening, as did the first slate of games on Monday, but by dinner time 2013’s first serious injury had occurred.

The exact extent of Ryan Ludwick’s dislocated shoulder is still unknown and will be until the results of an MRI are read, which won’t happen until the swelling goes down. Whether Ludwick will miss 2-3 weeks the way Jason Michaels did in 2011 or 3-4 months the way Jacoby Ellsbury did last season depends largely on how much damage was done to the labrum and surrounding connective tissue when the ball moved away from the socket as well as whether surgery is required to fix it. It is too early to say for certain, but if I had to guess, I wouldn’t expect Ludwick back this month. Given Ludwick’s position, the likelihood of an extended absence, and the position of the team’s top prospect – one Billy Hamilton – everyone should make a major free agent bid for Hamilton, right? Read the rest of this entry »

Spring Training stats don’t mean much of anything, but the Red Sox couldn’t ignore the .419/.507/.613 batting line Jackie Bradley Jr. put up in camp. With a spare bench spot thanks to David Ortiz’s continued injury problems, Boston took their 22-year-old wunderkind north and installed him as their everyday left fielder. Manager John Farrell wasn’t joking about the “everyday” part either, he started the left-handed hitting Bradley against CC Sabathia on Opening Day. He was rewarded with three walks in five plate appearances.

Before we go any further, let’s take a second to look back at what our own Marc Hulet said about Bradley this past winter when he ranked him as the Red Sox’s third-best prospect:
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We here at RotoGraphs preach patience. There is nothing worse than making a reactionary transaction based on a small performance sample and then a month later looking back and realizing your mistake. Unfortunately, every league has at least a couple of owners who simply cannot stop themselves from dropping the slow starter after a week and adding the flavor of the day. This means that your patient approach is going to almost guarantee you will miss out on the breakouts who went undrafted. So with that in mind, let’s look at the ultra tiny sample of one game to analyze some of the lesser owned hitters who launched a home run on opening day.

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