Fantasy has only been around for the last 20 years. Too bad, really. It would be way too fun to look back at what fantasy analysts were saying about Cy Young before the 1892 (1.93 ERA over 453 innings).

But in looking back at Babe Ruth’s stats the other day, I saw some curious numbers. And it made me think, if it were December of 1917 instead of August of 2010, would I be recommending the Sultan of Swat to fantasy owners? In short, I don’t think so.

First, Ruth was still on the Red Sox and still a starting pitcher at this point. So we’re looking at his ERA instead of salivating over his 60 HRs. And, of course, we don’t have nearly the info available that we would like—play-by-play-data didn’t come around until much later.

But let’s look at Ruth’s 1917 line. 326.1 IP. 24 wins. 2.01 ERA. 1.08 WHIP. 128 Ks.

Needless to say, Ruth was good. I don’t have league average values available to tell exactly how good he was, but I think we can go off Ruth’s lore to tell us that these standard stats were in the upper echelons of the time.

But Ruth had some worrying numbers too.                        

How about a 1.19 K/BB. He was striking out 3.53 batters per nine innings while walking just under 3 in the same time. Now, his poor K rate may not have been as bad for the time—again, I don’t have league averages—but really I doubt that was any good.

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"What state produces the most professional athletes per capita?" he inquired. I didn't know the answer, so we sat and speculated for a while.

"Texas," my brother said. I wasn't so sure. It seemed to me that while we knew that Texas, California and Florida all produced a lot of athletes, there also just a lot of people there. My gut told me the winner was not going to be one of these larger states.

Hawaii. That was my first guess. The small set of seven islands seemed to send a good number of players from its tiny population; players like Osi Umenyiora, Kila Ka'aihue and Shane Victorino. I figured that Hawaii wouldn't need that many players to overcome California--with its large populous.

It was a question of extrapolation, and I just didn't know. Hang on to that thought, it will be back.

But the more I thought about it, the less I was sure Hawaii was the one. I couldn't think of any NBA or NHL players that came from the 50th state in the Union. And what about the NHL? With so much of the league coming from Canada, I realized that Minnesota might have a huge leg up. What if Minnesota took the cake, simply from dominant numbers in hockey with below average numbers in every other sport? Was that possible?

No. Or if it is, it isn't the case. Fortunately enough there are people who do legitimate research on such pressing questions, and from sportsgeography.com I was able to learn that Louisiana is the winner (Washington D.C. actually has a higher rate, though it isn't a state). Alas, it was not my day. Though I will have you know that Hawaii ranked fourth on the list of states, so a small amount of my pride was left intact.

But back to my thought about Hawaii. I knew a small number of players from there, but that was offset by the fact that there are a small number people in the state. My question was, knowing such a small number of players, how accurate was my projection for the rate as a whole? In this case, fairly accurate. But what about football players with small sample sizes? How sure are we of their success or failures?

Let me preface this by saying this piece of writing is based off data published by Chase Stuart of Pro-Football-Reference.com. If you'd like the detailed version I recommend checking out his story. But in short, it's based on variance in yards per carry for running backs, and what an average back might be able to accomplish in a limited sample size.

Consider this the opposite exercise.

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A few days ago I wrote about the safest players to draft early on. I did it for several reasons, namely because I believe security in early rounds is a skill that is often slightly undervalued, and because it's way easier to pinpoint the riskier players than the safer ones.

So now I'm going to flip it around for the easier version—the players with the most risk.

Because there are so many players that can be classified as "injury-risks" or any other downside for that matter, I'm just going to give you one name per round of ADP (in an ESPN 10-team league) through the eighth round.

It doesn't always mean to stay away from these guys; it just means the buyer has to be aware of their downside. Get my king of safety Ryan Grant in round 2? Then maybe round 3 is a time to roll the dice on Ryan Mathews.

Ultimately, my criterion was the odds that the player mentioned gives you far, far less than you expected.

Round 1: Frank Gore, RB

I imagine this isn't the name most were expecting out of the first round. But of all the picks in this spot, Gore seems the most likely to fall even if he stays healthy. I'm not buying two rookie offensive lineman as the big fix for Gore, who relied on a few long plays for all his yards last year. And it's not like he's Mr. Healthy either—how can you call Steven Jackson or Michael Turner injury-prone when you're comparing them to Gore? Runner up: Michael Turner.

Round 2:  Larry Fitzgerald, WR

I'm down on Fitzgerald this year and I think he's risky. He's a great wide receiver, but with so much fluctuation in that offense, and after a bit of down year, what are you expecting from Fitz? I think we just don't know, and that scares me in round two. Runner up: Cedric Benson.

Round 3: Knowshon Moreno, RB

This is almost a cheap pick, because he frankly shouldn't be going this high. But given the injuries to Moreno, he really is a scary third round pick. And the Broncos's signing of LenDale White does not show confidence in their young back. Runner up: Ryan Mathews.

Round 4: Steve Smith (CAR), WR

It's not so much the broken hand that concerns me—it's more the age and a man named Matt Moore. I know Moore and Smith connected well last year but I don't really take away anything from that small a sample size. Smith could be primed for a huge bust season. Runner up: LeSean McCoy.

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You can't win your league with your first pick, but you can lose it.

It's a frequently-heard statement in the fantasy world. And unlike most broad mantras, this one holds a large amount of merit.

The belief is that with everyone grabbing top players off the board in the first round, the expectation is that they will be big producers. If they have strong seasons, it's simply the status quo. It's what you paid for. But if a first round pick self-destructs, that can be catastrophic relative to the value most of the other teams will be getting off their top picks.

No player is entirely safe from injury, loss of playing time or deteriorating skills, but there is a scale for risk. And that means, at least in my book, safer plays, even those with lower upside, should be upgraded at the top of the draft. This is especially true if you are confident in your own ability to target high-upside sleepers toward the end of the draft.

Below are some of the players that I would consider the safest bets in the first few rounds.

Ryan Grant, RB

Grant is the poster boy for this type of article. He's on a very good offense, and has been a steady performer for several years. Some disregard Grant because there is essentially zero chance he explodes beyond what he already has shown--but at the same time he's the lone back on the Packers and will get his share of rushes and TDs.

Andre Johnson, WR

How obvious. The top wide receiver, Andre Johnson. But Johnson takes the No. 5 spot on my overall rankings because I'm that much more sure he's going to be solid compared with Frank Gore, Steven Jackson or Michael Turner. Johnson proved last year that even with no help from the opposite WR (Kevin Walter) he can get the job done. No reason to expect he can’t again.

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As you may or may not know, us authors can check out the traffic statistics for Fake Teams. This includes page views, referral sites, and searches that lead to our stories.

I was looking through the info for a minute, when I stumbled upon one of the searches that led a Google (or Bing or Yahoo) user to my last article, Home Runs and Hate Mail.

"What percent of baseball fans hate Joe Morgan"

Who searches that? Aside from the slight grammatical error that I want to let go but can't, does anyone honestly believe this is a quantifiable amount?

Did this guy (or girl) think there was going to be a clean WikiAnswers page that promptly told him: 44 percent?

For whatever reason, this guy (unwittingly) got into my head. Seriously, I wonder what the percentage actually is. Even as a kid I remember thinking, "I want to like him commentating, I just don't." But I assume someone out there, a Reds fan probably, gets jacked up for the games Morgan is on. I just haven't met that guy yet. (By the way, when I write about Morgan, I'm writing about Morgan announcing. I don't think many people besides Billy Beane/Michael Lewis have a problem with him personally.) 

See what this one little search did to me? I've written over 200 words on Joe Morgan--and he has nothing to do with the baseball portion of this article. Nothing.

Before this unrelated open gets to become the story itself, let's just dive right into some red-hot players.

Chris Johnson, 3B

It's nice that the kid is hitting. And if you picked him up once he started, that's nice too. Let me put it this way. His BABIP is .426. His xBABIP is .325. Now that isn't going to last. He also has never hit more than 14 HRs in a season in the minors. Don't go expecting 10 more.

Adam LaRoche, 1B

I'm going to go ahead and prematurely pat myself on the back. Look, I have to. The guy is playing great right now and was probably my No. 1 sticking-my-neck-out-for-this-guy player in the midseason rankings. So far (fingers crossed) it looks like I've been right. I'm confident he'll keep it up.

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I'm a happy camper. 

Why, you ask? Because I received my first piece of hate mail. Really, it was a hate "tweet," but I'm treating it just the same--I'm not going to let that technicality spoil my mood.

The other day, I was pondering Nick Swisher, thinking about trading for him in one of my leagues. I need home runs, so I was concerned with making sure there wasn't any sign his power might drop off. I checked out his home runs on hittrackeronline.com, to see exactly how close they were to merely being flyballs. For those unfamiliar with the system, Hit Tracker designates home runs as "Just Enough" (JE), "Plenty" (PL) or "No Doubt" (ND). The league average for JE's is usually around 30 percent.

Only 5 of Swisher's 22 home runs were designated as JE. A below average mark showing that most of his home runs were well gone--he wasn't getting lucky in that respect.

So I tweeted my observation. (You can follow me @SethWalder, by the way).

It seemed harmless enough. Until, of course, I received a tweet back from an unknown follower.

Okay so it’s barely hate mail. Whatever. I’ll take it. Kudos to Joemck52 for knowing that right field at Yankee Stadium is 314 ft, I guess.

But I'm happy. It's the first semi-angry response someone has given me. I like it. It means they're reading (even if it's only 140 characters), which is nice. But also, that's just a part of using advanced stats--people disagree with you because it goes against the norm.

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We're all the best. We're all experts.

So when we talk about a losing fantasy season, it's not our fault. Injuries hit us--injuries to guys no one could forsee. Or we killed it in the roto categories, but head to head we barely fell short...every, single week.

How is it our fault when Josh Beckett was the one who ruined our season? Or Adam Lind? Or Carlos Lee? How about dreamy keeper Gordon Beckham.

If I'm describing your season, have no regrets. We've all been there. Hey, I'm there in a couple leagues as I write this.

But there's something else we all do because we're the best. We know when to throw in the towel. I'm talking about keeper leagues of course, because in those single season leagues we're still trying our darndest to at least make it into the, uh...peanuts.

But in keeper leagues, as the trade deadline approaches (ESPN standard puts it at high noon tomorrow) we know that there is a price to pay for being the proverbial LaDainian Tomlinson (hanging on too long). It can cost you next year. And if there's one thing worse than getting beat this year--it's getting beat this year and next year.

So while you half-heartedly send that spiteful e-mail to the contenders of your league telling them that your entire roster is available (I'll give you Roy Halladay and Ryan Braun for Martin Prado) for their keepers, know that in March you'll be glad you did it.

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I once noticed early this baseball season that Clay Buchholz was owned in 100 percent of ESPN leagues, but in less than half on Yahoo!. I thought this was pretty interesting—that’s a large discrepancy.

The experts on each of these sites—and the rankings that they create—have a profound impact on how leagues are drafted. So sometimes its interesting to see where sites disagree, and then how you might be able to take advantage of that fact if your league-mates are sticking to the status quo.

Here are a few players who have a large difference in where they are being drafted on the two platforms.

Steven Jackson, RB (ESPN ADP: 7.1, Yahoo ADP: 11.7)

It’s not a huge difference—only four and a half spots—but that’s large for the first round. I definitely think ESPN users are right on this one, there is no reason Jackson should be that low. Sure, the Rams stink, but they have before and he’s produced before. 11.7 puts in him in Rashard Mendenhall category and Jackson is way safer than Mendenhall.

Ryan Mathews, RB (ESPN: 28.1, Yahoo: 16.4)

Split the difference on this one. The rookie running back idea shouldn’t scare people all the way to 28. He’s the guy in San Diego. And I think if you like him, there’s nothing with wrong with grabbing him in at 16.

Hakeem Nicks, WR (ESPN: 74.9, Yahoo: 52.8)

I think Yahoo is correct here. I’m not an expert in football sabermetics, but from everything I read Nicks was one of the most efficient receivers last year in the NFL. Sure he’s not the No. 1 receiver on the Giants or your fantasy team, but you don’t have to draft him like one at 53 or so.

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With about a quarter of an hour to go, a quick (and hurried) run down on where trade rumors stand.

Adam Dunn--Ken Rosenthal has been insisting that Dunn will not be moved, but a plethora of people, myself included, believe Kenny Williams gets his man in the end. Keith Law tweets that he thinks Dunns should be moved. 

UPDATE: Mike Rizzo says Dunn is staying in Washington. 

Kerry Wood--Moved to the Yankees. Means Chris Perez is the new closer in Cleveland, presumptively, and should be picked up in all leagues where you need saves.

Jacoby Ellsbury--Red Sox may move him, allegedly are talking to the Braves. Ryan Kalish and Dustin Richardson will called up to the big club. Jeremy Hermida was DFA'd, though it seems odd given he still has minor league options. Something does seem to be up in Boston, even though few are talking about them. Alex Speier tweets that the Red Sox had room on their 40-man coming into today, making Hermida's situation more odd. 

UPDATE: Have not heard other names but no one has said anything against it. RotoWorld reports Red Sox and Braves talking over Ellsbury and a Portland sports radio host tweeted a source calls Ellsbury "in play."

Corey Hart--Giants said to be going after him, though they had a number of targets, including Jose Bautista. Jon Heyman just tweeted Jonathan Sanchez was seen hugging teammates in the dugout. 

UPDATE: Brewers assistant GM says Corey Hart not going to Giants.

Octavio Dotel--Sent to the Dodgers. Guess right now is Evan Meek takes over closer job but that is unconfirmed.

Ramon Ramirez--Looking like a deal may be in place to Braves and Mets.

Chone Figgins--Braves are allegedly after him via SBNation.

I may have cursed Scott Podsednik. The underrated and incredibly valuable outfielder has had his stock hurt—and then some—by the trade yesterday that sent him to Los Angeles. Podsednik will still have the opportunity to run in Los Angeles, and should be the same player until Manny Ramirez returns, but he just won’t get enough at bats to help you the way he has been everyday. So if you are a Scott Podsednik owner, you’re not happy.

But I wouldn’t give up hope. Don’t drop Podsednik yet—certainly not until Manny returns—and if you can afford the bench spot hold onto him. Needless to say but Ramirez isn’t most injury-free player, and Ethier has had problems this year as well. If one of the Dodger outfielders gets hurt, Podsednik would probably be in a slightly more valuable place than he was in in Kansas City. Moral of the story: you’re not happy, but don’t panic—yet.

As far as Roy Oswalt is concerned, this deal should change little. He’s pitched in four starts in Citizen’s Bank Park—and pitched well—but that’s not nearly a large enough sample-size to draw anything from. Obviously it’s a hitter’s ballpark, but he’s getting an improved offense behind him as well. Oswalt owners  probably are reasonably happy this happened, but the fantasy impact this will have on his season should be fairly minimal.

When I look back at it, it seems strange. Scott Podsednik’s average draft position on ESPN was in the 20^th round (in 10-team leagues). His average buying price in auctions? 0.0. At the beginning of the season Scott Podsednik was not owned in many leagues. Heck, there are still a few leagues he’s not owned in (what are those people doing, by the way?).

No joke, Podsednik is the No. 7 outfielder on ESPN’s player rater. Seriously.

It’s easy in hindsight, but why were we all so down on Pods? He stole 30 bases last year and batted over .300 in 2009. No, the he’s not going to help with home runs or RBIs, but there are other players like that that went higher. As Matthew Berry would say, there’s nothing sexy about Scott Podsednik.

But 29 steals at the end of July with a .300 batting average? That’s at least a little sexy. And he’s doing just fine in the counting stats.

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Before I open up this piece, I think there is something always worthy of bearing in mind this time of year—deadline trades are overblown.

It’s not that they can’t help a team—actual or fantasy—it’s just that by the time the deadline rolls around, we’ll be nearly two-thirds of the way through the season. Mostly they are overstated just because it’s a really exciting time in baseball.

But, keeping that in the back of thoughts, some players will be affected by where they end up, for better or for worse. Let’s take a look at what would be the best possible team for players to end up, from a fantasy perspective, among those teams that are considering them.

Dan Haren, SP—St. Louis Cardinals

For a guy who has had home run troubles this season, getting out of Chase Field would be a very good thing. In St. Louis he would get some run support and a slight pitcher’s ballpark. Maybe most important, they’re in the NL and play in a weak division.

Jose Guillen, OF—New York Yankees

Guillen, being a right-handed power hitter, would probably be more suited for Fenway Park than Yankee Stadium, but I’m not sure he would get as consistent playing time in Boston. Once the Red Sox return to health Guillen might not fit into their every day plans—whereas in New York he can be their full-time DH.

Ted Lilly, SP—New York Mets

No brainer here. The cavernous hole that is Citi Field is great for any pitcher, so Lilly owners would be lucky if he ends up here. It’s one of the reasons why I ranked Lilly so high in the midseason starting pitcher rankings—I felt there was a good chance he would end up in New York. For teams on the lower end of contention, I recommend targeting Lilly immediately in the chance that he goes to the Mets. Lilly is quite possibly the pitcher most likely to get moved before July 31.

Dan Uggla, 2B—Colorado Rockies

There hasn’t been much trade talk regarding Uggla yet, but ever since I heard about Sun Life Stadium’s propensity for strikeouts I have been salivating over the possibility of Uggla in Denver. Considering that strikeouts are his big problem, he may just simply be in the worst possible park for his style of play—and Coors would be just about the best. It would be a huge reversal of fortune.

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Owning Josh Beckett this season has not been fun. For the 45.2 innings he has pitched, he killed his owners’ ERA and WHIP. Some were almost thankful when we went to the DL—there was no obligation to trot him out there every fifth day to see yourself fall in the standings.

But after a couple setbacks, it’s now been two months since Beckett has stepped on a mound, and he will finally be making his return on Friday. But which Josh Beckett will we get.

From a qualitative standpoint, I’ll admit I am still concerned. Beckett has always struggled out of the gate, which is why most people weren’t panicking quite yet before he got hurt. But here is my question. Hasn’t Beckett been hurt long enough that he’s basically starting over? Does that mean we have to go through another month of struggles before he starts to be productive again?

I guess we’ll wait and see. On the statistical side of things, there were reasons that Beckett was pitching poorly—his walks were up, his Ks a little down and he was giving up line drives like it was his job. But there was luck involved too—his LOB% was at 55.9. So while he wasn’t that bad, he was still pretty rough.

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After much stat crunching, a lot of thinking and a decent amount of math, the starting pitcher rankings are finished. The four of us ranked what we believed to be our top 70 pitchers, though 80 pitchers were ranked overall. 

I felt that if you looked at the rankings as a whole, there were effectively three broad tiers of players. Inside the tiers we tended to disagree, but at the macro level I got the sense that there was a certain amount of consensus. I think as you go through the individual rankings you may notice the same thing. 

As always I will point out that these rankings reflect what we believe these players will do from this point onward. Actually, since each of us actually created our own rankings over a week ago, you ought to take them as "from a week ago onward." In the same vein, keep in mind that the rankings were done before a number of injuries, such as the ones to Roy Oswalt, Andy Pettitte and A.J. Burnett and the rankings do not reflect the players' status post-injury.

Because of the scale of the chart, I will not put it on the front page, just click on the jump to find it.

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It doesn’t take a genius to say that Jered Weaver is having an impressive season. At this point, he’s 9-5 with a 3.16 ERA and a 1.07 WHIP. Oh, did I forget to mention the 142 strikeouts?

But I’m here to tell you exactly how good Jered Weaver has been. And if you want me to cut to the chase, as far as I’m concerned, all systems are go for Weaver. He has completely vaulted himself into what I would call the second tier of pitchers, and not far off the first.

I feel like I’ve been teasing the pitching rankings for awhile now, but I will tell you that Weaver got some very serious respect from the four of us. Weaver finished our rankings with two votes at 10 and two at 12—so all four of us are fully buying his breakout. By the way, that ranking puts him ahead of Justin Verlander and Chris Carpenter.

But let’s get down to why Weaver has been so good. For one, Weaver is sporting a 9.98 K/9 rate with a 1.9 BB/9. Both those numbers mark significant improvements from his career averages. But the K’s aren’t an anomaly. His career 9.5 swinging strike percentage has increased to 11.3 this season. According to my K-Efficiency formula, Weaver’s K rate should correlate to an 11.9 swinging strike percentage. So while his Ks so far might be slightly inflated, the marked increase is real.

Everything else about Weaver seems in line. His BABIP is normal, as are his HR rates. His LOB% is a little high, but right with his career average. His groundballs have increased, which can only be a good thing. FanGraphs says Weaver’s curveball has been his most valuable pitch—and looking at Pitch f/x we can see that Weaver’s curveball has increased in vertical movement significantly.

I can happily say this is one case where we can tell you: do not expect a regression to the mean—Weaver is for real.

As our regular readers know, we’re just finishing up our midseason baseball rankings right now by position. Certainly, it will be great to see how accurate our predictions were, and we will definitely be looking back on them at the end of the year to see how we did.

But some of our calls—for better or for worse—deserve a special mention. Of course, our rankings are based on how we believe the players will perform from the moment we submit them onward. And we’re talking about half a season here. Some insane things happen in half a season. If you had said to me before the season Alex Rios was going to be a top 5 outfielder in the first half—I’d have called you crazy. But you would have been right. So we’re going to go over, some of our gutsiest calls—where we’re either very high or very low on one player compared to the group. A quick shout out to acr, this article was his idea.

Although I haven’t posted our starting pitcher rankings yet—they’re in. So you’ll get a sneak preview of some of those.

And just to be clear, I solely determined which picks to include in here, so there may be some personal bias toward/against players I like/don’t like.

Ray

Carlos Guillen at No. 13 in 2B. He has Guillen ahead of Dustin Pedroia, Kelly Johnson and Orlando Hudson.

Orlando Cabrera at No. 9 in SS. He has Cabrera ahead of Marco Scutaro, Erick Aybar and Troy Tulowitzki.

Carl Crawford at 8 in OF. Behind Justin Upton. Wow.

Clayton Kershaw as his No. 7 starting pitcher. In front of Ubaldo Jimenez, Felix Hernandez and C.C. Sabathia. Ray even said, "I have a feeling I am higher on Kershaw than most…"

Ricky Nolasco at 21 over Zack Greinke, Yovani Gallardo and Tommy Hanson. I guess he has faith.

Jason

Ryan Theriot as his tenth second baseman and No. 8 shortstop. He’s got him ahead of Aaron Hill, Rickie Weeks and Stephen Drew.

Jason Bartlett at 9. Over Scutaro and Alexei Ramirez.

Shaun Marcum at 59. I’m guessing Jason was concerned about Marcum’s injury. Note that he has him behind C.J. Wilson, Clayton Richard and Jair Jurrjens.

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Welcome to the All-Star Break.

For most of us, it’s the three worst days of the baseball season. Maybe not the baseball season. I guess I should revise to be the three worst days of the fantasy baseball season. There is baseball, it just doesn’t count—and only Bud Selig enjoys it…

Enough about the All-Star Break. We’re here to check out those players that had a horrible finish to their first "halves" and see whether it will indicate cold post-break play as well.

Mike Pelfrey, SP

About a month ago I said I would rather have Mike Pelfrey than Ricky Nolasco. I think I still feel the same way, but it’s a lot closer, though mostly because of Nolasco, not Pelfrey. Honestly my opinion of Pelfrey hasn’t been changed much by his last three starts—all of which have been rough. We knew Pelfrey wasn’t going to be that good all the way through the year, I guess it’s just his way of coming back to Earth. The break comes at a good time for him. I still believe him to be a 3.8-3.9 ERA guy, he’ll just have some good starts and some bad ones.

Justin Smoak, 1B

Hopefully for him a change of scenery is what he needed. I wrote in the comments on Friday that I thought the trade was a bad thing for his fantasy career, Safeco is not homer friendly and that’s his greatest asset. In the short term, Smoak has been a huge disappointment so far this season. Obviously there’s a chance he could catch fire at any moment, but he should not be owned in anything smaller than 14-team league.

Ricky Romero, SP

I’ve liked Romero all season and I still do. The reality is that he plays in the AL East, and in this case his last two starts were against the Red Sox and Yankees. Don’t be deterred, he’s good.

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Whew.

For those of you who have never done rankings, let me just tell you: It's much harder than it looks. For the outfielders we ranked our personal top 50. As always I'll remind you that these rankings are strictly our predictions for performance from this point on in the season. 

I find that rankings are particularly helpful for figuring out waiver wire options, as well as looking at possible trades you might not have thought of otherwise. Because this pool is so large, even more of those observations are available to you, I encourage you to look over the chart and see how individuals ranked players in addition to our group average. 

Because we ranked 50, the chart is quite large and I decided it would be too much to put on the front page--you will find it right after the jump

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We are now officially past the half-way mark in the season--and more than halfway through our rankings. Below are the shortstop rankings, anyone who qualifies at short in Yahoo, ESPN or CBS leagues qualifies. 

In most cases I think our rankings came down to who we felt would rebound, or would be more likely to rebound. Most of us have one or two players that we ranked way ahead of the pack, and in most cases its a player that has been underperforming and we think will improve, or an injured player that may have more of an impact on his return. 

Obviously placing Troy Tulowitzki was hard, but he fell in what I felt was a similar area that other injured players have been falling to in our rankings. Interesting that Clint Barmes, Tulo's replacement, made the list as well--he's been red hot since starting at short. 

As always, the best part of rankings is that people feel differently and question them, so question away! Particularly if you're wondering about one person's ranking, ask in the comments below and we'll do our best to respond. 

"SEATTLE -- The projected return of Erik Bedard to the Seattle rotation has been put off at least until later in the week and possibly until after the All-Star break.

All systems were go when Bedard threw Thursday for Triple-A Tacoma in a rehabilitation start. But in a subsequent bullpen session he came up hurting, and the Mariners have scratched him from his scheduled Tuesday start with the big club."

--FanHouse

While this wouldn't sound particularly threatening, the oft-injured Bedard has been derailed by seemingly minor problems before. My advice for fantasy owners would still be to pick him up, the potential to have his second-half off the waiver wire is just too tempting. Even if he is pushed back to the week following the All-Star Break, don't give up hope on him. Bedard is owned in just 16.9 percent of ESPN leagues. 

Erik Bedard threw his last rehab start in Triple A Thursday. From the reports, it sounds like it was a very successful outing. Bedard threw 81 pitches over 4 1/3 innings, giving up one unearned run. 

"The main thing is, he felt good after the start," Tacoma manager Daren Brown told the Seattle Times. "He was around the strike zone. I thought he got a little tired in the fourth and fifth innings. But early I thought he commanded the baseball well.

Bedard is owned in just 13.5 percent of ESPN leagues. As far as I'm concerned, you need a really good reason to not pick up Bedard now in all formats. 

Typically you don't want to start a player in his first game back, but Bedard is starting Tuesday at home against the Royals which is a tantalizing matchup. Go ahead and put him in your lineup. 

The Seattle Times said Bedard expects to throw roughly 90 pitches on Tuesday. 

Time for another installment of recent hot streaks—which I’m thinking of making a regular feature by the way. Hot streaks one week, cold streaks another. Seems like a decent plan.

Besides, with ESPN right now (literally the entire site is down as I write this) what better time to write a story.

Jake Peavy, SP

Peavy’s last start was only okay, but the four before that were very good. But hang on a second—those four starts came against the Indians, the Cubs (twice) and the Nats. Not exactly the 1929 Yankees. His K/9 is down and more importantly his swinging strike percentage is way down. I’m not a fan.

Chone Figgins, 2B, 3B

Figgins is stealing like a kleptomaniac. He’s a career .287 hitter, so he’ll pick it up. Safeco doesn’t help, but it’s not like he was going to hit it out of the park anyway. As I mentioned yesterday, in my second consideration of Figgins I bumped him up my rankings a good bit.

Adam Jones, OF

Cautiously optimistic here. Jones has been on fire lately (especially in the HR department), but I’m a little concerned that he isn’t walking at all. Still, I’m buying.

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And we move to the hot corner.

A word of warning to the readers: some of us are on different schedules due to the long weekend, etc. So I believe there may be some unsolved confusion over position eligibility for some players. As most of us think about the players that qualify in our own platform, there is a decent amount of difference between ESPN, Yahoo and CBS.

So, for players such as Jorge Cantu and Troy Glaus, those that didn’t rank them may have not realized they qualified. It just makes it a little more important to look at our individual rankings.

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Below you will find the compiled chart of our second baseman rankings. I'll tell you now it was a murky, murky group and while each of us only ranked 20 players, 27 different names (and it could have been more) made the list, which certainly says something.

These rankings were done Sunday evening by most of us, so bear that in mind when considering Dustin Pedroia. 

As you can see, the whole chart is pretty ugly, a lot of differing opinions at second base. I think first I would like to mention a few players who did not make anyone's list.

First off: Brian Roberts. I've heard Roberts may be returning in 4-5 weeks, yet he still doesn't make the top 20. I can't speak for everyone else, but for me, we still have no clue when Roberts will actually return to the field. He's relatively old and has continually had setback after setback this season. Just not worth using up a bench/DL spot on him with potentially no end in sight. 

Next up is Freddy Sanchez. I think Sanchez is worthy of being owned in many leagues--he posts a high average and has done it for some years now. Similar to Callaspo, my No. 20 player, but I kept Callaspo above him because of his slightly additional pop. 

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Below you'll find our midseason first basemen rankings. Brian (bluethunder33) has been added to the rankings corps for a fourth perspective, which is nice to have. 

As always, remember that these rankings are the order in which we would like to own these players from this point forward. 

Doing these rankings made me realize one thing: first base is incredibly deep. Picking and choosing the end of my 20 was difficult to do, those who just missed out were deserving to make the list--there just weren't enough spots. 

As I saw it there was a clear tier of 9: Pujols and Cabrera, followed by the other seven players that make up our 3-9 rankings. It appears that everyone agreed with this--while we all ranked the the 3-9 players quite differently, no other player made the top 9 on any of our lists. While I do have an order of preference for those players, I must confess there is little difference between them. If I were to acquire Mark Teixeira today (my No. 9-ranked player) I would have no qualms about it.

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As we make our way toward the All-Star Game, we thought it would be prudent to start our midseason rankings. Every few days, you’ll see a new set of position rankings, starting with catcher, today.

One thing it is important to remember when creating or viewing rankings: these rankings are in order of production from this point until the end of the season. No matter how bad the player may have hurt you already, this is where we believe he stands for the rest of the season.

Separate rankings have been done by Ray, Jason (jumperjah) and myself, and then averaged together to get a group ranking, though you can see each of our individual rankings in the chart below as well.

It was an interesting group to rank, and not particularly easy as it got fairly ugly fairly fast. One big discrepancy came with ranking Matt Wieters, which should be of no surprise. It more or less comes down to the odds of him finally breaking through. Interesting as well was how different the three of us came down on Ryan Doumit, though considering his injury-riddled past maybe this is less surprising.

Feel free to comment on whom you think we were too high on and too low on, I have no doubt this should cause some conversation.

FanGraphs added swinging strike percentage to its repertoire a little bit ago, but only recently has one been able to sort the leaders of the stat. Inspired by this, I decided to do a little number manipulation.

We know that there is a fairly strong positive correlation between swinging strike percentage and strikeouts. So, knowing this, I figured it might be fun to check out which pitchers should be throwing more Ks given his swinging strike percentage, and which should be getting fewer.

I placed both sets of stats (swinging strike% and K/9) in a spreadsheet side by side. The sort of undervalued player we are looking for has a high swinging strike percentage and a low K/9, so subtraction was in order. Because the two rates are on a different scale, I added the two numbers then divided to find out that swinging strike numbers are 1.192 times larger than K/9 in terms of sheer size. So my formula was (SwStr%) – (K/9)(1.192).

I’m calling the resulting number K-Efficiency (apologies if this has been done elsewhere—I’m sure it has I just haven’t seen it—and it stands by another name). The higher the number actually means a lower K-Efficiency, so here are the top 10 leaders of players that "should" see an increase in their strikeouts. 

Other notables among the top 30: Ricky Nolasco, Gavin Floyd, Johnny Cueto, Anibal Sanchez, Edwin Jackson.

It’s reassuring to see Nolasco on this list. I mentioned previously that I am very concerned about Nolasco, particularly given his lower K rate. He might not get back to last year, but maybe he should be striking out at least a few more people than he is.

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