Found the light switch. In the zone. In a groove. Dialed. Signed a deal with the Devil.

Call it what you want, but after Mike Carp’s sizzling finish to 2011, fantasy managers want to know just who the hell this guy is who was supposed to be simply “organizational depth” for a fledgling franchise.

The 2011 Seattle Mariners, buoyed largely by some fantastic starting pitching, hung around in the AL West race long enough to let Mike Carp bludgeon AAA pitching until the organization couldn’t not call him up. So they did. And he stunk. He stunk badly. Like .200/.333/.257 with no home runs and 14 strikeouts over 15 games bad. And then they couldn’t not send him back down – which they did on July 3rd.

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When it gets down to the final few rounds of your draft or those last couple of auction dollars, you need to make some smart decisions.  Keeper league owners usually drift towards the minor league hopefuls that could make an impact either this year or next, but for re-draft leagues, it’s about winning now.  Sure, you could take a chance on a prospect and hope to get a second half call-up, but obviously there are no guarantees and the player could be waiver fodder by mid-season, rendering the pick a waste.  You might be better served sifting through some of the major league rosters and finding yourself a couple of utility players who could realistically end up with extra playing time.  It happens almost every year, and the value that some of these guys produce by year’s end could be the difference between a championship squad and an “also-ran”.

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Josh Willingham had his best major league season last year with the Oakland A’s. He is now a free agent this off season and has yet to find a new home. No matter where he ends up, he looks to be a great sleeper pick for 2012.

Before playing for the A’s last season, Josh spent time with both the Nationals and Marlins. The right-handed-hitter had several decent seasons with 20+ HRs and around a 0.270 AVG. In 2011, he had his best power season with 29 HRs and a career high 0.232 ISO.

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Over the last week or so we’ve done plenty of articles discussing the impending move of the Houston Astros to the American League and how it will impact those in the fantasy baseball community.  But no matter how many times we attempt to look on the bright side and find the silver lining in it all, there’s one common thing that seems to come through in every piece.  It’s like that early montage in the movie Major League where the Indians’ fan base is looking at their 40 man roster in disbelief — from some guy asking who Mitchell Friedman is to the groundskeepers’ claims that “these guys are sh*tty”.  There’s almost no love for the 2012 Astros and very little hope for the club moving forward.  However, just like the old fantasy adage (is there such a thing?) that states that even closers on bad teams can be good and helpful, the same can be said about everyday players from Houston.  Just because the team is in relative shambles, doesn’t mean that you can’t find some helpful players at a bargain cost.

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On Monday, I looked at which players showed an increase in their batted ball distances from 2010 to 2011. Not all increases can be seen in the year to year data. Some changes begin to occur during the season like with Jose Bautista and Curtis Granderson in the past couple of years. Here is a look at some players that may be turning their game around for the better

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A few weeks ago, I looked at the luckiest and unluckiest pitchers that pitched over 180 innings in 2011. Today, I am looking at the pitchers between 120 and 180 IP. These pitchers are starters, but missed some starts in 2011 because of time in the minors, injuries or being shut down at season’s end.

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Pitchers tend to induce different types of batted balls. Some are fly ball pitchers. Others induce ground balls. While there are always pitchers at the extremes, a few pitchers go beyond the norms on a yearly basis. Today, I am looking at pitchers whose 2011 batted ball data was outside the normal range of values.

To get the extreme baselines, I took the the top and bottom values for a pitcher with over 400 IP total over the past 3 years. Here is a look at some pitchers that may be in store for some batted ball corrections in 2012

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Baseball is a grind. It’s 162 games played nearly every day over a six-month period. By extension, then, the fantasy version of this unending onslaught of a sport can be — and often is — just as overwhelming.

Look, it happens: Late-summer hits and the portion of your brain that was tending to your fantasy baseball team on a regular basis instead shifts its focus to other things, like vacation, fantasy football or the hot chick named Tiffany who spent the summer as a lifeguard at the local beach and hung out all the time at your favorite bar.

That’s why, unless your team was good enough to be in contention all the way down to the stretch run, chances are, you missed out on a few things as the season wore on, particularly into August and September. That’s when the non-contenders tend to check out (if they haven’t done so weeks before), but it’s also about the time that even those chasing after that elusive championship start suffering from tunnel vision as their eyes become focused solely on the prize.

Now that we’re a couple weeks removed from the crush and rush of the final days of the fantasy season, allow me to point out a batch of American League outfielders who performed better than you might have realized, thanks to end-of-season surges or new opportunities. There just might be a nugget or two in here that you didn’t notice the first time around. You know, while you were too busy ogling Tiffany.

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There might not be a more up and down player in fantasy than Kelly Johnson. After establishing himself as a useful fantasy second baseman in 2007-2008, Johnson completely fell off that radar at the position after a dreadful 2009. Just when it looked as if Johnson’s usefulness as a fantasy option was at it’s lowest point, Johnson responded with an incredible comeback season; in which he was worth 5.9 WAR. In the same environment that Johnson excelled in 2010, he faltered in 2011. A change of scenery may have helped his value down the stretch, but it makes Johnson one of the riskiest fantasy players entering the off-season.

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Prior to the All-Star break, four RotoGraphs writers — Eno Sarris, Jeff Zimmerman, Howard Bender and me — engaged in the just-for-fun activity of drafting Pick Six-style teams, with the pool of players limited to those available in 10% or less in ESPN leagues (at the time of the draft).

Given those parameters, the exercise proved to be challenging, but if you paid attention to our picks, you may have managed to snag a useful fantasy player or three off the waiver wire — no matter what kind of league you play in.

I took the temperature of our picks back in August, but now that the season is finished, let’s tally up the scoring to get the final results. And while we’re at it, we’ll rank the players based on their fantasy impact in 2012.

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