Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.
Meet the ... Eventual landing spot for Manny Ramirez. Seriously, it's going to happen sooner or later, so we'll just assume it's already happened for the purposes of this post. Obviously, if he either signs elsewhere (unlikely) or sits out this season (as unlikely as the holier than thou media embracing A-Rod), we'll have to re-fantasy-spin the entire offense. He's that important to the lineup.
All winter we've been sitting by and waiting for the Dodgers and Manny Ramirez to finally come to terms on a contract to keep the dreadlocked one in Los Angeles, but yet, here we are on February 20 with teams in spring training and Manny is still a free agent. The thing is, while most people have paid attention to Manny as a top free agent without a home, there have been a whole slew of other Type A guys sitting on their hands waiting for a phone call.
One of those guys was second baseman Orlando Hudson, who has no doubt suffered due to a bad economy and a newfound commitment to the draft by teams across baseball. Well, since they have nothing better to do with their time while waiting for Manny, the Dodgers have decided they don't need that draft pick, and signed Hudson this afternoon.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
Other than trying to sort out which two teams will come out of the gauntlet otherwise known as the AL East, there is no division tougher to figure out this February than the NL West. The Dodgers are the reigning champions, but they won just 84 games last year and Manny Ramirez and Derek Lowe are merely the highest profile departures from the team this winter.
The free agent market has been notoriously slow, but at least one player seems to be in high demand. Orlando Hudson informed the MLB Network Monday that no fewer than four teams are interested in him: the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers and Nationals.
Considering he's a Type A free agent who was offered arbitration, any team that signs him will owe the Diamondbacks a draft pick as compensation, which makes the cost of acquiring him a bit higher than his salary alone. But still, he's a three-time Gold Glove winner and one-time All-Star, and despite turning 31 years old in December, he's still in his prime.
It seems yesterday's "Andruw Jones to the Mets!" rumor died as quickly as it was born. The Mets and Dodgers did in fact talk about bringing the overpaid and overweight center fielder back to the NL East, but talks fizzled once the Dodgers balked at taking back a bad contract in return.
According to Marty Noble of MLB.com, the Mets were hoping the Dodgers would take Luis Castillo, who has three years and $18 million left on a four-year deal he signed last winter. Considering Jones is still owed roughly half of the $36.2 million contract he signed last winter, it seems like an even deal, right?
Perhaps, but if the Dodgers are going to be tying up that much salary, they may as well get it over and done with in one year, especially with Rafael Furcal and Blake DeWitt occupying the middle infield for the foreseeable future.
I don't know Jeff Kent personally, but I don't think I have to know him to know that he's not the friendliest person on the planet. Every time I read a story on Jeff Kent, it's usually about something he doesn't like. He didn't like Barry Bonds, so he got into a fight with him in the dugout. He doesn't like Vin Scully, and I'm pretty sure he didn't like losing his job to Blake DeWitt in the playoffs either.
But you know what Jeff Kent really isn't a big fan of? Gay marriage. Jeff is such an opponent of gay marriage, in fact, that he's even donated $15,000 to help get Prop 8 passed in California next week. Proposition 8 being a move to ban gay marriage in California.
Jeff Kent, who played second base for the Los Angeles Dodgers this season, has stepped into the emotional world of same-sex marriage, giving $15,000 to backers of the California proposition on Tuesday's ballot that would ban it.
In a disclosure filed with the California secretary of state, Kent listed his occupation as professional baseball player for the Dodgers and his address as Austin, Texas. He gave the $15,000 in a transaction dated Monday but which only now is public.
Now I'm not going to start a debate here as to whether this is right or wrong because gay marriage is one of those issues where you can't convince anyone to change their minds anyway. Besides, I'm not even sure I support marriage between a man and a woman. Still, I will say that I think it says a lot about Kent that this $15,000 donation is the only one Kent has made. Forget important things like health care or foreign policy, we got to keep those homos from getting married! (Hat tip to SPORTSbyBROOKS)
Somehow, the MLB playoffs just aren't dramatic enough for the people charged with announcing them. As if simply describing what's happening in front of them isn't enough, baseball announcers tend to go far past the realm of reality during the playoffs. This hyperbolic tendency is what gave rise to the scrap-tacular David Eckstein and the Dragon Slayer Josh Fogg. In order to ward this off and prepare you for this, I give you the 2008 guide to NLCS hyperbole.
Potential Hyperbole: Tell me this conversation isn't coming:
Tim McCarver: You know, Joe, Manny Ramirez just makes me so angry! He literally slaughtered an innocent puppy and drank his blood in Boston and Theo Epstein had no choice but to trade him! Just made like a vampire right there in the clubhouse!
Joe Buck: Well, Tim, Manny Ramirez might not be a nice guy, but he's the modern equivalent of Atlas! I mean, he picked the Dodgers up on his shoulders and LITERALLY carried them to the playoffs! (preens for the camera)
The Truth: No one understands Manny Ramirez. I don't, you don't, Theo Epstein doesn't, Joe Torre doesn't, and Tim McCarver certainly doesn't. And yes, Manny has been awesome with the Dodgers, but Rafael Furcal, Russell Martin, and James Loney all played huge roles in the sweep of the Cubs. The Dodger are not a one-man show. Pretty much everything said about Manny in this series is going to be an exaggeration.
With just over 24 hours to go before the first pitch of the National League Championship Series, the writers of the MLB FanHouse gathered for a discussion of the Phillies and Dodgers. It didn't take long for the discussion to veer away from who will win and onto the ever fascinating and potentially otherworldly Manny Ramirez.
Josh Alper: Is it just me or is it really hard to find a clear edge in this series? The Dodgers and Phillies each have strong rotations, bullpens and offenses. The biggest difference, to me, is that the addition/return of Manny Ramirez and Rafael Furcal give the Dodgers a stronger 1-8 lineup than the Phillies. Not by a lot but by enough to give them a slight edge over seven games.
Tom Fornelli: Both these teams are incredibly hot right now. The Dodgers are 20-8 (including playoffs) in their last 28 games, and over that same time period the Phillies are 20-9. A strong series from Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, or Pat Burrell can easily propel the Phillies past the Dodgers. Which is why I'm leaning more towards the Phillies because I think they have more options on offense, whereas the Dodgers are basically centered on Manny.
In the Playoff Pulse series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.
These aren't your daddy's Dodgers, you know the franchise that had one playoff win in the last 20 years. Heck, these Dodgers barely resemble the team that was lagging behind the Diamondbacks and below the .500 mark in the NL West three months ago.
The Cubs found that out the hard way in the NLDS, and the Phillies (or Brewers) could be in for a similarly rude awakening in the next round.
Los Angeles won 84 games this season -- the fewest of any postseason team. It's worth noting that the last playoff team to win so few games -- the 83-78 2006 Cardinals -- went on to the World Series. But that team had Jeff Weaver and Anthony Reyes in the rotation and hit an extraordinary hot streak at the right time. This Dodgers team does not need to go on a fluke hot streak to win it all. It is much better than its 84 wins would suggest.
It will be all too easy to point to the Manny Ramirez trade as the key turning point in Los Angeles' season. His impact is undeniable. He hit close to .400 over the final two months of the regular season and he had two home runs in the three-game sweep.
But Ramirez is only part of a radical in-season makeover that has turned the Dodgers from an expensive flop into an NLCS team.
I remember when I was a kid I went to a White Sox game against the Yankees with my dad. It was a special game in history, because it happened to be the day that Andy Hawkins threw a no-hittter against the White Sox. Oh, and he also lost the game 4-0.
I was only nine years old at the time, so I didn't quite understand the significance of what I'd just seen, I just knew that the White Sox had one, and that it was a good thing. The idea of how Hawkins must have felt after the Yankees committed three errors in that 8th inning to lose the game never crossed my mind. Looking back on it now, though, I'll bet he was pretty pissed off.
Weaver held the Dodgers without a hit through six innings before being removed for a pinch-hitter and turning things over to Arredondo, who retired the Dodgers in order in the seventh and eighth innings. The game did not qualify as an official no-hitter because the Dodgers did not bat in their half of the ninth inning.
The Dodgers scored in the fifth on a pair of errors, a stolen base and a sacrifice fly. Weaver committed the first error when he couldn't cleanly field leadoff hitter Matt Kemp's dribbler up the first base line.
Kemp would go on to steal second base and move up to third after Jeff Mathis saw a cute girl in the stands and wanted to impress her* by playing catch with Torii Hunter in center field (*this is my interpretation, anyway). Kemp would then score on a sac fly by Blake DeWitt, and the Dodgers would win 1-0.
All of which means that in his next start, Jered will give up 15 hits in 7 innings of work, yet the Angels will win the game 13-7. Baseball just has a way of balancing this stuff out, so it's important that Jered not let this bother him going into his next start. Things could be worse, after all, he could beJeff Weaver.
Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over. 
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The free agent market has been notoriously slow, but at least one player seems to be in high demand. 
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Somehow, the MLB playoffs just aren't dramatic enough for the people charged with announcing them. As if simply describing what's happening in front of them isn't enough, baseball announcers tend to go far past the realm of reality during the playoffs. This hyperbolic tendency is what gave rise to the scrap-tacular 
I remember when I was a kid I went to a White Sox game against the Yankees with my dad. It was a special game in history, because it happened to be the day that 
