FanHouse Ramon Hernandez

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.

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

I think we can all agree that it's far too early to start voting upon who the best 2009 players are when it's only the middle of May. That being said, there are certainly some shining stars at this point who deserve some props. Plus, Major League Baseball recently released their All-Star ballots for our voting pleasure -- we vote on who will start the All-Star Game. If that's not important, I don't know what is. Let's take a gander.

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday. It appears Saturday because of the A-Rod and Manny Ramirez news.

Heading into Saturday's action, the Cincinnati Reds have played pretty good baseball. They've taken some lumps, but overall it's been a good start for a team that finished 14 games under .500 in 2008. They've gotten good pitching, but their offense leaves something to be desired. Only the Diamondbacks and Giants have scored less runs in the NL.

Boy, they could really use Adam Dunn.

When you run around in fantasy baseball circles long enough you hear terms thrown around too often. Words like "sleeper", "breakout" and "undervalued" are overused catchphrases comparable to Arnold Drummond's "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" or Donald Trump's "You're fired!" However, it's next to impossible to talk fantasy baseball for any length of time and not get caught up in this oft-used terminology. That being said, let me explain what I mean by undervalued.

In this article I'm going to take a look at Average Draft Position as calculated at Mock Draft Central. After looking at ADP and comparing that to projections for 2009 a few catchers will appear who I think will outperform (read: have better statistics) their current draft positions. I'm not predicting career years here or campaigning for these guys to be drafted higher than they currently are being taken. I'm merely stating that you'll get good value and maybe even be surprised with how well these three catchers perform compared to where you get them in your fantasy draft.

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 definitely won't be clogging up the bases. That joke never gets old, but, seriously, this is a team who has the potential to make some noise. Their lineup and rotation are both good, and there are several solid fantasy players here. If you want stars, though, keep on moving. There are lots of really good players here, just no great ones.

While the Baltimore Orioles are still one of the teams interested in signing Adam Dunn after losing out on local boy Mark Teixeira, the team also has a hole to fill behind home plate. After trading Ramon Hernandez to the Reds earlier this month, it appeared as though the Orioles were clearing room for catching prospect Matt Wieters to take over the role. Now it seems that not everybody in the organization is convinced that Wieters will be ready to take on that responsibility when the season starts.

Which is why they've contacted Scott Boras about Ivan Rodriguez to see if he'd be interested in becoming an Oriole.

Former Oriole Gregg Zaun remains the free-agent catcher most likely to end up in the Orioles lineup on Opening Day, but there have been conversations with agent Scott Boras about veteran Ivan Rodriguez. Whether he would be a good fit to mentor Matt Wieters and eventually step aside for the O's top minor league prospect has been a subject of some discussion in the O's front office.

I don't see Pudge ending up in Baltimore because at this stage of his career I'm sure he'd rather be on a team considered a World Series contender, and with the Orioles playing in a division that includes the defending AL champion Rays, the Red Sox, and the U.S. Treasury New York Yankees, the Orioles are not a World Series contender.

Especially if that non-contender is only signing him as a temporary solution until their other catcher is ready to take over. Of course, if Rodriguez did sign with Baltimore, I suppose they could just do what the Tigers did if he doesn't appreciate losing his job to an unproven prospect and just trade him at the deadline when they're out of the playoff race.

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.

Clearly, reports that the Reds were going to open the winter meetings with a splash by trading for Jermaine Dye were premature. Still, Walt Jocketty has been active this week and on the second day of the activity in Vegas it looks like he has pulled the trigger on a trade, even if it's not the deal everyone was talking about two days ago. Instead, they've sent resident crazy-person Ryan Freel to Baltimore in exchange for Ramon Hernandez.

Lest you think this rumor is just more smoke coming out of Vegas, Ken Rosenthal's got it confirmed while Walt Jocketty told Cincinnati reporters, "I'll tell you all about it later," when asked about the move. According to John Fay, it looks like the only thing holding this up is the approval of the commissioner's office because it involves more than $1 million.

Looking at this quickly from both team's perspectives, the Reds are picking up a catcher that they hope is going to have a little more pop that Paul Bako and Javier Valentin did last year, though Hernandez has been pretty bad the last two years with the O's. Baltimore, meanwhile, has no use for Hernandez because the best prospect in baseball right now, Matt Wieters, is probably ready for prime time after obliterating just about every level of pitching he saw last year. In Freel they pick up a utility guy who's aging, but who can probably be useful at getting on base if he's healthy. Of course, he hasn't really been healthy in two years, so that's a big question mark.

Two full days of rumors and we get Ramon Hernandez for Ryan Freel. Yep, this is what the winter meetings is all about.

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2009.

Meet the new Rays. Tampa Bay's ascent to the top of the American League has robbed the Eastern division of its perennial doormat, but there's someone new on the block to push around -- the Orioles. It's now been 11 seasons since Baltimore qualified for the playoffs or even had a winning record, and that dubious run will likely be extended in 2009.

But it's not all doom and gloom in the Charm City. In fact, in a little more than a year Andy MacPhail -- seemingly free from the tinkering and meddling of owner Peter Angelos -- finally has the Orioles pointed in the right direction. In any other division, you know one that doesn't have four teams with 80-plus wins already in it, the O's might have even been within shouting distance of the .500 mark this year.

There is little hope of contending in the immediate future in Baltimore, but the organization's recent mistakes have almost all been caused by thinking that there was a quick fix somewhere out there. The Orioles have a rapidly improving farm system and they're not that far from being a real factor, but in order to get there, they're going to need to stay on the track MacPhail has started them down.

There are a slew of new options at backstop that have emerged over the past two weeks, especially when you consider how often fantasy players will rely on someone old like Jason Varitek, and just stick him in there and move on. Catcher shouldn't be given that much attention, but you at least have know when to jump ship and hop onto a new option.

J.R. Towles, for instance, is totally legit. He might not have Brad Ausmus' defense just quite yet, but he doesn't have Ausmus' weak stick either. Geovany Soto is rapidly rising up the list of new catchers that fantasy players want to jump onto. Ryan Doumit is a K machine, but he's a masher too and has a ton of power in his bat; I'd be all over him if I didn't own an elite catcher or one of the two above. Ramon Hernandez is hot right now too, but I think he's more of a sell high if you can move catchers at all.

Player	Team	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
McCann	ATL		at FLA	at FLA	at FLA	LAD	LAD	LAD
Vmart	CLE	BOS	BOS	DET	DET	at MIN	at MIN	at MIN
Martin	LAD	PIT	PIT	PIT		at ATL	at ATL	at ATL
Posada	NYY	at TB	at TB	BOS	BOS	at BAL	at BAL	at BAL
AJ Pierz.	CHW	OAK	OAK	at BAL	at BAL	at TB	at TB	at TB