FanHouse Carlos Beltran

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2010.

At $149,373,987, the New York Mets had the National League's highest payroll in 2009. Their fourth place finish in the NL East, 23 games back in the standings, might suggest that the cash Omar Minaya dished out wasn't money well spent. A closer look reveals a team harassed all season by injuries and a group of hitters that could never find a long-term answer to produce runs.

In the outfield, Carlos Beltran had a potential All-Star season broken up, playing in only 81 games due to a knee injury. In fact, only Jeff Francoeur amassed more than 500 at-bats among Mets outfielders, and he was a mid-season import from the Atlanta Braves.

The infield wasn't spared either as mainstays Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes had their seasons cut extremely short due to injuries. Even staff ace Johan Santana ended his season early with elbow issues.

The good news is that most of these players are expected to be healthy and ready to go for spring training.

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Poppin' out of the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

By now we all know of the greatness of San Francisco pitcher Tim Lincecum. He's the best pitcher in baseball this season, with a 2.34 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and 233 strikeouts in 200 1/3 innings. But there's another hard-throwing young kid in the Giants organization that, like Lincecum, has a shot to be one of the league's best very quickly. He's a guy you want to burn that No. 1 waiver priority on, in case he sticks in the rotation for the rest of the season. He is Madison Bumgarner.

Poppin' out of the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

On Thursday in Philadelphia, one of the game's best pitchers from years past squared off against arguably the game's best pitcher of today. Who would win the battle of old versus new? It turns out fantasy owners were the big winners.

Tim Lincecum struck out 11 batters, which isn't even close to a season high for the kid, and walked one over seven innings while allowing two runs, but all that got him was a loss.

Pedro Martinez, making his fifth start with the Phillies, moved to 3-0 on the strength of a nine-strikeout, no-walk performance. He threw 62 of his 87 pitches for strikes and looked completely dominant after a first-inning homer by Eugenio Velez.

It's now official. The New York Mets announced Tuesday that Johan Santana will need surgery on his left elbow and miss the rest of the season. According to the team's release, Santana saw medical director Dr. David Altchek and it's been decided he'll need arthroscopic surgery to clean out some bone chips in his left elbow.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

A few weeks ago we discussed the possibility of the Padres promoting 21-year-old phenom Mat Latos. Well, he now has four major league starts under his belt, and, needless to say, he's doing just fine. After a solid outing Monday night, Latos is 3-1 with a 2.66 ERA and a sparkling 0.89 WHIP. He's struck out 16 while only walking 6 in 23 2/3 innings. He's also pitching in one of the best pitcher's parks in baseball.

So, he should be owned in all fantasy leagues, right?

MLB Power Rankings: Where MLB FanHouse's editors, writers and bloggers team up to break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world.

It's a funny thing, sometimes, to see how Power Rankings shape up over the course of the season. Just like when we started the year, there are a number of teams from one particular division sitting atop the rankings. Of course, there are plenty of surprises -- WHERE DID THE FREAKING GIANTS AND ROCKIES COME FROM?? -- and some other interesting stuff, like the fact that the Mets and Cubs just haven't been that good, which we discussed on the inaugural BaseCast recently.

Mets fans, you can breathe a huge sigh of relief. Monday night, we passed along the information that Carlos Beltran was visiting a specialist -- and outlined the worst-possible-scenario: Beltran missing the rest of the season. Instead, he's been diagnosed with just a bone bruise, as the team originally believed.

Beltran's choice of doctor raised eyebrows, considering he visited a well-known micro-fracture surgeon, Dr. Richard Steadman. Still, Steadman examined Beltran and determined he just needs to stay off his feet. He did push back the timetable for Beltran's return to after the All-Star break.

As if the Mets needed to deal with more bad news this season Carlos Beltran is now going to visit a specialist. Beltran was in the midst of an All-Star season when he injured his right knee. Right now, all we know is that Beltran has a bone bruise under his knee.

The possibly worrisome news is the fact that Beltran is visiting Dr. Richard Steadman, who performs micro-fracture surgeries. If Beltran does, in fact, have or develop a micro-fracture in the knee area, that's even bigger trouble than his current DL stint. Judging from what we've seen in baseball and other sports, and the fact that we're almost in July, micro-fracture surgery would probably end Beltran's season. We can't get ahead of ourselves just yet, though.

Over the course of 162 games, longer if you count Spring Training and throw in a World Baseball Classic, players tend to get nicked up, bruised, broken and anxious. When the injury bug hits players on your fantasy roster you have to react quickly.

It's time to take a look at some recent injury news, talk about how it can effect your fantasy team, and find ways to fix the problem.

Ervin Santana, Angels - Santana wasn't progressing as well as he could have been with the comeback from his strained right forearm. He missed the first month of the season due to the injury and upon his arrival back went 1-3 with a 7.47 ERA in five starts. The Angels are bringing up Sean O'Sullivan, who threw seven solid innings last week in his major league debut, but he may be too green to add to your roster. Since you were hoping for a low ERA and big-time strikeout numbers when you drafted Santana, look at Ubaldo Jimenez who has a 3.73 ERA and 76 strikeouts. Jimenez is only owned in 56% of fantasy leagues.

Poppin' out the box scores and right into your cubicle, the Roto Rush is your double espresso shot of fantasy baseball advice every weekday.

Troy Tulowitzki was the runner-up for the 2007 Rookie of the Year, but he followed it up with a rough 2008. And a rough beginning to 2009. All of a sudden, though, the kid has caught fire. Not coincidentally, the Rockies have as well.

After trouncing the Angels Monday night, the Rockies have now won 15 of their last 16 games. After going 0-2 in the first game of the streak, Tulowitzki has gone 20-for-48 (.417) with 5 home runs, 11 RBI, 15 runs, 4 doubles and 5 stolen bases. Again, that's in 15 games.