Fantasy owners in search of The Next Big Thing™ should take note of a certain starting pitcher in the Brewers system who is on the verge of the big leagues and has legitimate Cy Young stuff. Unfortunately, Zack Greinke is already owned in your league. Although he’s set to make a rehab start or two while recovering from his fractured rib, Greinke isn’t exactly eligible for a spot in this edition of Mining the Minors. But here are three lesser-known minor leaguers who could make an impact at some point in the near future. In fact, one of them is Greinke’s Nashville Sounds rotation mate.

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There are a number of prominent fantasy players who are currently injured but are scheduled to come off the disabled list in the next few weeks. Late April could end up feeling like Christmas to some owners. We’re going to take a look at three of those players today.

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Surprise, surprise, Josh Hamilton is hurt again. Yesterday, Eno Sarris outlined what the Rangers are likely to do in terms of divvying up playing time in Hamilton’s absence. David Murphy is a potential replacement for your fantasy team, but he is likely to already be owned in deep leagues. As a result, I have decided to ignore him and provide some other outfield options for those owners struggling to replace Hamilton’s production.

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Let’s take a look at a couple National League outfielders that might be interesting for teams of different depths.

Michael Morse (20% owned in Yahoo, 2.8% owned in ESPN)
Maybe ESPN has fewer five-outfield leagues. Maybe Yahoo has more NL-only leagues. ESPN’s projections aren’t fabulous – a .341 OBP with 15 home runs – but you’d think that would be owned in more than 2.8% of all leagues. Let’s not get too up in arms about this, though, because Morse is making it tough for us to love him. Yes, he’s playing at first base with Adam LaRoche feeling his sore shoulder, but its unlikely he’s going to be worth much more as a corner infielder than a fifth outfielder. The thing that is most concerning about his early-season work is his strikeout rate. So far he’s struck out in a third of his at-bats after putting up a 23.9% percentage over his career. It’s in a small sample size, but given that Morse struck out in 30.1% of his 55 PAs in 2009 and 24.1% of his 293 PAs last year, and that makes up about half of his 717 career major league PAs, we shouldn’t be sure that we know his true-talent-level strikeout rate just yet.

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