FanHouse LukeScott

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.

Well, I'll tell you one thing: baseball ain't boring, folks. At least if you're in the middle class anyway; the upper crust is (somewhat) starting to establish itself across MLB's ranks and the bottom portion of the league is certainly holding steady. But in the middle, well, goodness. We have a lot of would-be title contenders. How's your semi-crappy team faring in the all-important MLB FanHouse Power Rankings this week? Find out after the jump.

Saturday Spotlight is a weekly look at the stories and personalities of major leaguers.

Luke Scott has been just about the hottest player in the big leagues over the past couple weeks. Getting most of his action as the Orioles designated hitter, Scott is hitting .323 with 13 homers and 33 RBI. Acquired from the Astros in the Miguel Tejada deal, Scott could be playing his way into the All-Star Game. Oh by the way, he's also packing a .45-caliber Glock, so don't mess with him (seriously).

You can hear the audio interview by clicking after the jump.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That Ichiro Suzuki has another hitting streak going. Suzuki singled in his first at-bat on Saturday and ran his hitting streak to 23 consecutive games. Since Ichiro got to the big leagues in 2001, this is his seventh hitting streak of at least 20 games.

In that time, no one else in the majors has had more than two streaks of that length.

"It's not a fluke that a guy like that has consistency in his game," Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said. "He's so strong mentally that you see the exact same approach day in and day out with him. Even if he does struggle a little bit, he seems to find a way to get either an infield hit, hit the ball the other way or pull the ball. So he has a lot of weapons, and obviously the ability to still run at his age allows him to do that."

Here's what's weird though. Although Ichiro has gotten to 20 seven times, he's never gotten past 25, the franchise record he set in 2007. Fifteen players have had hitting streaks of 26 games or more during that time.

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

Oh what a difference a month makes. Josh Beckett's ERA in April stood at 7.22, including a two-game span where he was shellacked for 15 runs. Since then he's hurled five straight quality starts and posted a 2.38 ERA in May. His ERA is now 4.60 and his WHIP is 1.47, both of which fail to indicate his true current value. Often, like in Beckett's case, you can only get an accurate gauge by looking at what a player's done lately instead of viewing overall stats.

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

Remember when Rickie Weeks was a hot new prospect whose quick bat drew comparisons to Gary Sheffield? Yeah, turns out that was four years ago.

Following season after season of frustration for hopeful fantasy owners, Weeks is finally coming through. The speed isn't there, but he's homered in three straight games to give him nine total in only 140 at-bats. By comparison, he only hit 14 in 475 at-bats last year. So has our man-crush of yesteryear suddenly transformed into the new Dan Uggla, or is this impressive power display just another tease?

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

You couldn't have scripted all of the twists and turns the first 20% of the season has taken thus far. And if you could have, would anybody really watch?

Who had Frank Francisco and Ryan Franklin as two of the closers tied for the major league lead with nine saves at this point in the season? And we all knew Zack Greinke had talent and could blow up at any time. But, a 5-1 record with a 0.51 ERA and a league-leading 59 strikeouts. Seriously?

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 who just can't buy a break. They can't get any big names to sign with them (Mark Teixeira, A.J. Burnett), they are getting majorly outspent by the two big boys in the division, and the Rays skyrocketed past them last season due to an impressive franchise turnaround. I've seen people tout these guys as the "2009 version of the Rays." My reply? You have got to be kidding me. There's not near enough here for a run at .500, much less the World Series.

From now until the regular season begins, Fantasy Flings is where you'll find interesting story lines about your favorite teams from Spring Training. If there is a position battle, a nagging injury, a comeback story or a youngster making a surge for the "big club" we'll let you know the fantasy implications.

Boston Red Sox
What's the strength of this Red Sox club so far in spring? By looking at the numbers, it's their bullpen. The seven projected relievers in the bullpen (Jonathan Papelbon, Takashi Saito, Ramon Ramirez, Justin Masterson, Manny Delcarmen, Hideki Okajima and Javier Lopez) have combined to give up only one run on six hits in 13 innings of work. Last season the Red Sox bullpen produced 34 wins and these seven pitchers struck out 456 batters. What does all of this mean for your fantasy club? It means that Paps is still a solid, lock down closer. It also means that if you're looking for cheap wins, strikeouts, low ERA's and WHIP's you should start by scouring the Red Sox pen. And if your fantasy league uses holds, the value from this list just went up.

The Orioles have had themselves quite the busy offseason. They've made about 23 trades with the Cubs (OK, so it was only two), and they've also managed to theoretically trade Brian Roberts about ten times. Perhaps more important than any move they've made to bring players in, though, they also managed to sign Nick Markakis to a contract extension a few weeks ago.

Now they've gone and made another addition to the team, as they've signed free agent Ty Wiggington to a two-year deal pending a physical.

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

Though it had been widely reported for the better part 24 hours, the Orioles officially announced the trade of catcher Ramon Hernandez to the Reds Tuesday. Hernandez is, more or less, your average starting major league backstop -- nothing to scoff at these days.

But he had to go for one very good, very big reason: Matt Wieters.

Wieters is nothing less than Baseball America's 2008 Minor League Player of the Year, an excellent catcher and an even more outstanding hitter.

Orioles president Andy MacPhail,pictured, said the Hernandez deal was almost entirely about clearing a spot for Wieters to play regularly. "It had been our goal to introduce Matt on to the major league scene in the '09 season," he said. "As a franchise we realized our future was probably with [him]."

Ya think? Wieters posted an absurd .355/.460/.625 line across two levels in his first full season as a professional this year. And for the privilege of opening a spot in the majors for a weapon like Wieters, MacPhail also got three players, including Ryan Freel, who is injury-prone but also versatile, particularly as they look for a platoon mate for left fielder Luke Scott, and prospect Brandon Waring, who has real pop (40 home runs in 188 games as a pro).

MacPhail was careful to temper expectations, saying that Wieters was not guaranteed to be the Opening Day catcher and that the Orioles would probably add a veteran backstop later this winter. But Matt Wieters is coming -- and soon.