FanHouse RyanDoumit

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

By the looks of his season stats, you wouldn't know that Jordan Zimmermann has actually been one of the most dominant pitchers in the majors over the past month. We're talking a 1.90 ERA and a .198 batting average against. On that same note, Minnesota's Scott Baker is holding opposing hitters to a .205 average over his last five starts. The turnaround of these pitchers teach fantasy owners an important lesson about staying patient and swooping in when the time is right.

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

As Joey Votto heads out to a rehab assignment, the Reds are anxiously awaiting the return of their best hitter. Votto hasn't started a game since May 27 -- when the Reds stood at 26-20. Since then, they've gone 8-11. As a team, the Reds are hitting .244 and rank 11th in the National League in runs scored. Votto is hitting .357 with eight home runs and 33 RBI in only 38 games. Translation: The Reds really, really need him. They aren't the only team in baseball that will be missing a star player in the upcoming weeks. After the jump, we'll list the Top 10 most important injuries in baseball moving forward in 2009.

Futilitywatch '09 is a our semi-regular update on the Pittsburgh Pirates and their march toward their record 17th consecutive losing season.

In our last installment two weeks ago, we left the Pittsburgh Pirates for dead as they sat at 12-16, in the midst of what turned out to be an eight-game losing streak that dropped their record to 12-19. Since then, the Bucs have reeled off seven wins in 10 games and sit at 19-22. In fact, if their bullpen hadn't blown an eighth-inning lead last night, they'd only be one game under .500 and Bucco Fever would be sweeping Pittsburgh. Or something.

MLB Power Rankings: Where we care what you've done for us lately when we break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world each week.

HAVE YOU HEARD? YANKEE STADIUM HAS A WIND TUNNEL!!! Does it matter/is it real? Probably not. In fact, it might actually be on the other end of the spectrum of importance when compared to MLB Power Rankings. This week, we welcome another brand new No. 1 at the top of our rankings, although, all spoiler alerts aside, it's from the same division as last week! Debate the quality of your team, after the jump.

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.

Bad news coming out of Pittsburgh today for the Pirates. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the CT scan on Ryan Doumit's right wrist (which he injured swinging the bat on Sunday) showed a "minimally displaced fracture of the scaphoid bone." I don't know what that really means, other than that he needs wrist surgery to insert pins and he'll be out 8-to-10 weeks while he heals.

This is just about the worst news possible for the Pirates, who are off to a surprising 7-6 start behind an excellent starting rotation that leads the majors in ERA. After trading Jason Bay and Xavier Nady last year, offense was already a big question for the Bucs. Now they're losing one of the three guys they were really counting on for offense this year. Things could get ugly over the next two months.

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

You Oughta Know ...
The White Sox visited the White House, and apparently the visit was without much drama. You had to wonder if a team led by Ozzie Guillen and including A.J. Pierzynski could get through such a public event without sparking some sort of controversy.

In fact, it was quite a friendly visit the team had with President Obama, a die-hard Sox fan. White Sox reliever Octavio Dotel even got a hug from the First Fan.

"Just to be close to him and have that chance ... I saw the opportunity to ask for a hug. He said, 'Of course.' That was really nice of him. He knows a lot about us. He noticed that we've been playing well lately. He's a big fan. I can tell he really enjoyed [the visit].''

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.

If you click the "Pirates" tag, you may be surprised to see one or more Dugouts on every page, despite the fact that we almost never do Dugouts about the Pirates. What this means is this: even people who infrequently mention the Pirates do so more than the rest of humanity. I'm going to google "Pirates blog" and get a bunch of black and yellow webpages with news about the Mets.

This afternoon's Dugout of March is after the jump. Arrrr, bottle of rum, Johnny Depp, etc.

FanHouse continues its 2009 MLB Preview with a look at the Pittsburgh Pirates.

For the better part of the last decade, the Pittsburgh Pirates aimlessly wandered through the wilderness of baseball with Kevin McClatchy and Dave Littlefield at the helm. Finally, they lost their jobs and Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington took over. For more than a year, the new front office has been working on digging out of the hole dug by Littlefield during his reign of terror. There's only one real problem: The hole dug by Littlefield was so deep that it's going to take more than a year to dig out of it.