FanHouse J.D. Drew

For a number of major league teams Mondays and Thursdays are travel days. Every Wednesday and Sunday, Fantasy Fill-Ins finds guys who should be widely available on the waiver wire and can step in for the day, helping you gain ground or hold off the pack.

On Thursday we have ten major league games on the docket. That means there are plenty of players to choose from on the waiver wire. Here's five of the best options.

Matt Diaz, Braves - Not only has Matt Diaz batted .424 over the last month, but his OPS is 1.187. As good as those numbers are, he has had better results against Ricky Nolasco in his career, going 6-for-11 (.545) when facing the Marlins hurler. Diaz is only owned 22% of fantasy leagues.

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday -- it's running Friday this week.

Earlier this week, Brad Lidge's nightmare 2009 season continued, when he allowed a walk-off homer to Andrew McCutchen. Ed Price covered the outing the following morning. The abysmal performance by the Phillies' closer underlines the only weakness of the defending World Series Champions.

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 must be nice being a Phillies pitcher.

The Philly sluggers put 12 runs on the board in yesterday's game against the Diamond- backs, giving them a total of 25 runs scored in the three-game sweep. Joe Blanton went eight innings and allowed three runs, which is going to be enough to earn a W on most nights when you're on the same team as these hitters. The team has now won eight of their last nine games and look to be the favorites to repeat as NL champions.

While everyone's been following the on-again, off-again, on-again twists and turns surrounding the attempt to make Moneyball into a motion picture, another baseball movie based on a book has quietly been filling out it's lineup card.

Three Nights in August, the book about noted Twitter-hater Tony La Russa by noted blog-hater and author Buzz Bissinger is moving toward the silver screen with the help of a veteran of another big-screen baseball picutre. Billy Bob Thornton, from the wholly unneccesary remake of The Bad News Bears, has signed on to produce the big-screen version of Bissinger's tome about a 2003 series between La Russa's Cardinals and the Cubs.

Federal authorities have asked seven Major League Baseball players -- Greg Maddux, Bernie Williams, Johnny Damon, J.D. Drew, Andruw Jones, Carlos Pena and Jay Bell -- to return millions of dollars that they received from investor R. Allen Stanford as part of a payout in his alleged Ponzi scheme, according to a report in the Washington Times.

The players -- all clients of Scott Boras -- did not commit any wrongdoing, but, as early investors in the Stanford Financial Group, are believed to have received dividends from Stanford financed by investors that came after.

The MLB amateur draft is Tuesday -- you should totally join us for our live chat -- and there really isn't all that much drama in finding out who the first selection is going to be. If the Washington Nationals don't take San Diego State starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg, the entire baseball world will spin off of its axis and probably kill millions of people in the process. Or there will be a whole lot of "What Were The Nationals Thinking?" columns on Wednesday morning. Probably the latter, though the former would be a bigger story.

Anyway, the only real drama surrounding Strasburg and the Nats at this point is whether or not they'll be able to sign him. Scott Boras thinks that Strasburg is the greatest pitcher ever born unto the Earth since Jesus Christ was a young southpaw on the Nazareth Stars, and that Strasburg deserves somewhere around $50 million without ever throwing a pitch professionally.

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 that decided not to spend big bucks in the offseason. Reversing course from the normal offseason spending spree in New England, the Red Sox team headed into 2009 looks remarkably similar to last year's squad. You'll recognize all nine hitters in the starting lineup and a majority of the starting rotation. Key acquisitions were made in the bullpen, bringing Takashi Saito from the Dodgers and Ramon Ramirez from the Royals. John Smoltz will look weird without a Braves uniform, but should make a major contribution to the pitching staff when he returns from shoulder surgery. And if Brad Penny can return from injuries to his 2007 form, he should provide a nice spark to the rotation as well.

From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

While there is still time left in the Hot Stove season, and there are a few high quality players left on the market -- Ben Sheets, anyone? -- the Yankees have been the team who has made the biggest splash in all of baseball thus far. That splash was seemingly a reaction to missing the playoffs for the first time since the strike-shortened 1994.

It's easy to group the Red Sox and the Yankees together. Heck, during the Rays' amazing run last summer the two ancient rivals almost became one word. ('Can the upstart Rays really hold off the YankeesandRedSox?'). And the rush to mash them into one Northeast superpower makes sense, at least on the surface.

Rabid fanbases that are more alike than they would like to admit. Century-old tradition. Deep coffers. Expectations of success that would seem ridiculous anywhere else. There's no doubt the franchises have plenty in common.

But from a baseball operations standpoint, it's getting harder and harder to see numerous similarities. Consider the players Boston has signed this winter: Brad Penny, Josh Bard, Rocco Baldelli and John Smoltz. CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett those guys ain't.

Of course, the Red Sox are still big spenders. They were something like $12 million short in the Teixeira sweepstakes, depending on who you believe, and they've given out a few whoppers over the years like the Daisuke Matsuzaka ($103 million between the posting fee and his contract) and J.D. Drew ($70 million) deals.

Our MLB editor files dispatches from the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas in Notes From Sin City.

Just when it looked like it was going to be a very quiet Winter Meetings, CC Sabathia, the biggest fish of all in a large free-agent pond, comes off the board. As they say in my home state of Maine, if you don't like the weather, just wait 15 minutes.

Here's a scattering of thoughts on the Sabathia deal as we wait for an official announcement from the Yankees, something which might not even happen today.

- In the end, the interest from the West Coast that Sabathia was so hoping for never materialized. He might have told Ned Colletti that he wanted to be a Dodger on Sunday, but L.A. never got serious about him. The Giants simply couldn't offer him the length of contract that he wanted and the Angels are still chasing after Mark Teixeira.

In fact, the Yankees' initial offer seems to have worked exactly as intended -- it blew everyone else out of the water, leaving the Brewers as the only team who kinda, sorta waded into the market and they simply couldn't mount a real challenge.

- The opt-out clause is interesting because it guarantees one of two thing -- either Sabathia's contract is going to become an enormous albatross or we're going to be repeating this scene three years from now. Seriously, when has a free agent with an opt-out clause ever not opted out if he's healthy. Alex Rodriguez, J.D. Drew and A.J. Burnett are the three most recent examples, and it simply makes no financial sense to stick with your original deal with the way inflation works in baseball.

- This almost certainly takes the Yankees out of the Mark Teixeira market, but they are far from done adding pitching. The guess here is that CC's teammate in Milwaukee, Ben Sheets, joins him in New York before Christmas. As for the Teixeira market, nothing is going to happen here in Vegas, but it should progress quickly in the next two weeks. He too wants to settle on a team before the holidays.