FanHouse Matt Kemp

While some people around Major League Baseball are losing their jobs for failing to win games, others around the league are being rewarded for their success. The Los Angeles Dodgers are getting ready to make their third appearance in the postseason in the last four years, and it looks like the man who is in charge of putting the team together is about to be rewarded for it.

There's word out of Los Angeles that the team has begun negotiating with general manager Ned Colletti about signing a long-term contract extension with the team. Colletti is currently working under a deal that includes a mutual option for 2010, and now the Dodgers would like that to last a bit longer.

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.

Before we get our heaping of box score browsing, let's look at a related subject: The fantasy baseball stretch run. With the annual ushering in of September baseball, we see roster changes galore. Not only are there call-ups with the legal expansion of rosters, but players with seemingly minor injuries are shut down on teams who have fallen out of the race. You also have younger players being given an audition for 2010, or being shut down so the team doesn't overwork them in their first season of increased workload. If you are in the thick of things in your fantasy baseball race, now is not the time to use a laissez-faire approach.

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

Yes, the Dodgers' solar system revolves around Manny Ramirez. He's their star on the field and their main attraction.

But they wouldn't have Ramirez, nor many of the players who carried the team in his absence, were it not for a farm system that has been remarkably productive.

"It's nice that management kept us all here," ace Chad Billingsley told FanHouse. "There's some teams that maybe just start trading guys away. And believing in us, that's a huge thing."

In the 2002-03 drafts, Los Angeles took Russell Martin, James Loney, Jonathan Broxton, Matt Kemp and Billingsley. Those five players made their big league debuts within an 11-month span, from July 2005 to June 2006.

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

We've seen our fair share of no-hitters and perfect games get busted up in late this season, maybe even more then our fair share. In fact, if Jonathan Sanchez hadn't finally made it all the way through nine innings back in early July, I'd think there was some sort of conspiracy against the no-hit bid in 2009.

Sunday, Brett Anderson took a perfect game into the seventh inning against the Los Angeles Angels. But, just like most of the attempts for perfection this season, the Angels found a way to play spoiler. This time it was Bobby Abreu in the seventh inning.

Abreu also was responsible for breaking up Anderson's perfect game, grounding a clean single through the left side with two outs in the seventh. Anderson promptly picked him off.

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

You Oughta Know ...
That Matt Kemp put on quite a show a day after he lost out on the final spot on the National League All-Star team. The Dodgers' center fielder was one of the five players on the fan ballot for the final spot, which was won by Philadelphia's Shane Victorino on Thursday.

On Friday night, Kemp hit a go-ahead grand slam to lead the Dodgers to a 12-8, 10-inning victory over the Brewers in Milwaukee. In the bottom of the inning, Kemp recorded the final out of the game making a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, running with his back to the infield.

Kemp said he'd actually been fooling around making over-the-shoulder catches in batting practice earlier in the day.

"I was messing around with it in batting practice today," said Kemp, who ran up the wall for show after the catch. "I guess I thought I'd use it in the game."

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LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers were enjoying a magical start to the season. Best record in baseball. Longest season-opening home winning streak of the modern era.

And then "it was like somebody punched a hole in the balloon," manager Joe Torre said.

In the hours between Wednesday night's victory and Thursday morning, word got around the Dodger organization that Manny Ramirez, who had defined the franchise since he was acquired last July, had been suspended for 50 games for violating baseball's drug policy.

Hundreds of media members converged on Dodger Stadium on Thursday, caring little about the team's hot start or its winning streak. They were there to see how the Dodgers were handling the stunning loss of Ramirez.

Ahhhhhhh... Opening Day!

It's one of the finest days in professional sports. Free agents have been signed. Rookies have busted their humps to make the big club. And now we get to see where the chips will fall.

Now that just about every team has one game in the books, let's look back and talk about some fantasy implications that can be drawn from Opening Day. This first day of baseball offers us only a minute sample size to read from. But there are story lines already developing.

It's only one game but...
Did you see what youngsters Jordan Schafer and Emilio Bonifacio did? Schafer hit a home run in his first Major League at-bat (the 99th player in history to do so). He was 2-3 on the night as his Braves team sent a message to the World Champion Phillies that the NL-East wasn't going to be a cake walk. Bonifacio also hit a home run in his first game of the season. His was an inside-the-park job as this kid has speed to burn. Bonifacio was 4-5 with three stolen bases as he hushed the critics that said he was too immature to handle the leadoff role in Florida.

In his first full season in the majors, Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp had a pretty impressive campaign. He hit .290 with 18 homers and 76 RBI while stealing 35 bases. It was the kind of season that has plenty of Dodgers fans wondering just what their 24-year-old outfielder is capable of doing.

Perhaps Kemp will be able to increase his power production this year and maybe join the 30-30 club with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases? Well, that would be nice, but Kemp is dreaming a little bigger than that. He's got his eyes on a 40-40 season.

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.

As we'll preach time and again at FanHouse, compiling a successful fantasy baseball team isn't about the most productive players. It's about what players give you the most value. Carlos Quentin was much more valuable last season than Ryan Braun -- despite ending with slightly inferior numbers -- because of how much cheaper he was to attain than Braun.

The best way to compile a winning team is to recognize areas where you can maximize the value of your draft picks. Not spending high picks on closers is one way to do this. Finding players being underestimated is another. Another, still, is to find places lacking depth and grab a strength.