FanHouse HowieKendrick

In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.

The contrast between Tuesday night's starting pitchers could not have been more stark. CC Sabathia was efficient, mixed his pitches and threw nothing but strikes. Scott Kazmir, on the other side, never seemed to find any kind of rhythm and essentially played right into the strengths of the Yankee lineup.

New York's lineup is difficult enough to navigate without giving them any assistance, and assistance is exactly what Kazmir gave them. If you intend to have success against them, you must establish a secondary pitch in the early innings. Especially given the issues their lineup has had against the breaking ball in the early part of the ALCS, Kazmir's ability to locate his slider was going to be crucial to his outing.

In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.

It's easy to be pessimistic after a team suffers a crushing loss, mostly because fans and broadcasters alike like to zone in on intangibles like momentum and the players' psyche. But if you are a New York Yankees fan and looking for reasons to be worried, there are some perfectly logical and tangible ones to focus on.

From the performance of Joba Chamberlain, to many of the Yankee hitters' struggles against the breaking ball, to the decision most New York fans will be screaming about, the removal of David Robertson from the game in the 11th inning in favor of Alfredo Aceves, there are more than enough tangible reasons to be concerned about the Yankees. And from a scouting standpoint, there are certainly points of intrigue in New York's weaknesses.

While he doesn't have much power or a ton of speed, one thing Howie Kendrick has always been able to do is hit the baseball. His career batting average in the minor leagues is an absurd .360 -- with a .972 OPS, which is even more impressive considering his lack of home run power. In the majors, he's generally been a .300 hitter as well. Thus, entering 2009 as a 25-year-old with a firm grasp on an everyday second base job, expectations were a bit high. Kendrick flopped.

He was demoted to the minors after hitting only .231 with an abominably low .636 OPS through 51 games. After about three weeks in Triple-A, though, the Angels feel confident Kendrick is ready to come back, and he's been recalled.

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

This coming weekend, Major League Baseball will reveal its 2009 All-Star teams. So what better opportunity than this to run through a list of this season's "Anti-All-Stars." Anti-All-Stars is far too bland a name, though, so we decided to name the team in honor of Andruw Jones. After all, he was the poster child for guys not earning the lucrative contracts bestowed on them last season. We'll sort through each position and find the player who is least helping his team in comparison to expectations -- whether monetary or from management.

Once upon a time Howie Kendrick was rated the 12th best prospect in the game by Baseball America, ahead of future All-Stars like Jonathan Papelbon, Carlos Quentin, Ryan Braun and Cole Hamels and a whole 65 spots in front of reigning American League MVP Dustin Pedroia, also a second baseman.

That was 2006.

Three years later Kendrick has failed to establish himself in a meaningful way at the major league level, and it could cost him his job according to the Los Angeles Times.

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

It wasn't enough for Jacoby Ellsbury to win every U.S. citizen a free taco by swiping the first base of the 2007 World Series. No, Jacoby Ellsbury does more than feed the country. He's working to steal the hearts of all baseball fans. He took a step towards that goal Sunday night by stealing home during the final game of the Yankees/Red Sox series at Fenway Park.

This was the first straight-steal of home plate by a Red Sox player since Billy Hatcher did so in April of 1994. Jose Offerman stole home on the front-end of a double-steal in 1999.

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

In news that probably means a lot more to fantasy baseball players than real baseball fans -- with all due respect to the Pirates and their true fans -- Ryan Doumit is going to miss the next 8-10 weeks. He'll be undergoing wrist surgery and have some pins inserted. As fantasy owners, we must march on and look at how to replace the production of a very solid offensive catcher.

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

One fantasy baseball question becoming increasingly more prevalent these days is very succinct: Is David Ortiz done? The problem? It's a tough question to answer. What do we actually mean by "done?" Is he ever going to be the guy who hit 54 home runs or the one who drove home 148 runs again? No. Not a chance.

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...
Team about to win about 15 less games this season. Teams in their division have closed the gap on the Angels, who are aging in some spots and not yet developed at others. The biggest factor to consider in fantasy is how many less games their starting pitchers will likely win.

FanHouse continues its 2009 MLB Preview with a look at the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

When the Angels acquired Mark Teixeira last July, it was thought by many to be a bold move by a team not content to simply be 10,000 games ahead of the Rangers in the West and cruising toward the playoffs. Teixeira was supposed to be the player that was going to push them past the Red Sox and on to the World Series.

Whoops.