FanHouse Stephen Strasburg

The Nationals learned Friday that the knee injury suffered by Stephen Strasburg will not require surgery to repair. It's instead been diagnosed as a dislocated knee cap. As painful as that sounds, there's no ligament damage and the Nats' phenom will only require rest and some rehab to get the knee back up to full strength, though he'll still miss Saturday's Arizona Fall League championship game.

Considering those that witnessed the injury firsthand saw Strasburg crumple while playing long toss on Thursday and reported hearing a popping sound (often a telltale sign of ligament damage), this is obviously great news for the Nats. I can't even fathom following up a 103-loss season with a serious knee injury to the highest-paid draft pick in baseball history.

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2010.

The Nationals bottomed out in 2009. Their season began with the ouster of general manager Jim Bowden in the beginning of March after he was implicated in a bonus-skimming scandal in the Dominican Republic that drew the attention of the FBI. And it ended with 103 losses, giving them 205 losses in the last two seasons.

In between, they fired manager Manny Acta and watched attendance fall by more than 6,000 fans a night in the second year of Nationals Park.

So no, it's not all sunshine and roses on the banks of the Anacostia River, but, then, it's not all doom and gloom either. After all, the Nats managed to lock up phenom Stephen Strasburg in August, and with a stable front office and a permanent manager now in place, they can get to the task of building around him.

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The Arizona Fall League is chock-full of young prospects looking to make their mark. Desert Diaries is your twice-weekly look at which of these up-and-comers could make a fantasy baseball splash in 2010.

It looks as if there will be a changing of the guard in Baltimore. Melvin Mora, who has 1,323 hits and 158 home runs during his ten year tenure with the Orioles, has been told that his $8 million option will not be picked up. Jeff Zrebiec of The Baltimore Sun says that the Orioles will look into a number of options at third base this off-season. They'll even consider Josh Bell, who's faring well in the Arizona Fall League.

The Arizona Fall League is chock-full of young prospects looking to make their mark. Desert Diaries is your twice-weekly look at which of these up-and-comers could make a fantasy baseball splash in 2010.

In case you missed it while you were at that pesky place called work on Thursday, Washington Nationals prospect and first overall selection in the 2009 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, Stephen Strasburg, made his second appearance in the Arizona Fall League. He didn't do well.

Strasburg pitched 2.2 innings on Thursday, striking out four, walking one and giving up a whopping three home runs which lead to seven earned runs against him. According to Chico Harlan of The Washington Post, the seven earned runs he gave up in his outing yesterday were almost half of the number he gave up in his entire junior season at San Diego State.

The focus of most Major League Baseball fans is directed towards the playoffs right now as teams fight for their chance to play for a World Series title. But the astute fantasy baseball GM should be looking in the desert as the Arizona Fall League has just started.

Why tune in and watch young baseball players with little or no major league experience? Well, in the Arizona Fall League last year, hitters like Drew Sutton, Gordon Beckham and Nolan Reimold tore up the competition -- showing that they could make contributions at the major league level.

You also should not forget about a pitcher by the name of Tommy Hanson. In seven AFL starts last year Hanson struck out 49 batters while only throwing 28.2 innings. He also had a 5-0 record with a 0.63 ERA. We all know what Hanson did for the Braves in 2008 -- and for fantasy GM's who knew his name on draft day.

Who will be this year's Tommy Hanson?

Anyone hoping to see Stephen Strasburg in a big-league uniform in 2009 got some disappointing news Tuesday. MLB.com's Jonathan Mayo confirmed that Strasburg's first professional appearances will be with the Phoenix Dirt Dogs in the Arizona Fall League. This shouldn't be surprising news (Andrew Johnson reported that possibility here on FanHouse last Friday), but I think a large group of more casual fans expected to see Strasburg in red and blue almost immediately. That will clearly not be the case.

The reality is that even the most advanced pitching prospects in the past few seasons have made at least some minor-league starts before making their big-league debuts. After being drafted by the Giants in 2006, Tim Lincecum made 14 minor-league appearances in 2006 and 2007 before getting an early call to San Francisco. The Orioles drafted Brian Matusz fourth overall last year and he made his debut in the AFL, then made 19 minor-league starts before the O's brought him up a few weeks ago.

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

As the No. 1 overall pick in 1990, Chipper Jones signed with the Braves for $275,000.

Even in today's dollars, that's about $450,000 -- or about 3 percent of Stephen Strasburg was guaranteed as this year's No. 1 pick.

And Jones agreed to his deal the night before the draft, while Strasburg came within two minutes of missing last Monday's deadline to sign.

"I think the only way that you're going to get kids signed and get them into the various camps is to put some kind of cap on it," Jones said. "I was always of the belief that you make your money at the big-league level."

That's how the teams want it too. When the current collective bargaining agreement is up in two years, Major League Baseball may pursue an NBA-style slotting system -- with signing bonuses locked in depending on how high a player is picked, as opposed to the current non-binding slot recommendations.

WASHINGTON -- Five whole hours before the last-place Nationals opened a series with the reeling Milwaukee Brewers, hundreds of fans packed into the stands on the third base line at Nationals Park.

No. 1 overall pick Stephen Strasburg arrived in the nation's capital Friday afternoon four days after inking a record $15.1 million deal with one of baseball's most downtrodden franchises.

"It's been pretty wild," Strasburg said of the week-long process that began with down-to-the-wire negotiations and ended with an unofficial coronation in Washington. "It's a tremendous feeling. I'm excited to get my career started and hopefully I'll be playing up here with [the Nationals] soon."

Mike Rizzo was given the Washington Nationals general manager job earlier this season after the team dumped Jim Bowden, but he got it with the interim tag. Well, after Rizzo negotiated to just about the last minute to sign Stephen Strasburg he got one heck of a thank you. Word broke last night from Yahoo!'s Gordon Edes that the Nationals were about to replace Rizzo with Arizona Diamondbacks vice president Jerry DiPoto.

Now, according to CBS' Danny Knobler, DiPoto has been telling his friends that he plans on leaving the Diamondbacks and accepting the Nationals general manager job.

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

Eugenio Velez (pronounce the first name: ay-ooh-HEY-nee-o) is a relative unknown major league baseball player. He's currently gaining playing time for the San Francisco Giants without having an actual starting job. He fights for playing time at second base (against Freddy Sanchez), left field (against Nate Schierholtz and Fred Lewis) and right field (against Randy Winn). Lately, though, Velez has been playing pretty much everyday, and swinging a hot bat. The question is, can it continue?