Every week, Baseball Prospectus’ own Bret Sayre puts together The Stash List. This list is an invaluable resource. I often use it not only to ascertain who might be close to making an impact in my deep leagues but also to get a feel for what the market value might be for a player. In leagues where I can bid on minor leaguers, this gives me a feel for when I might need to bid; in leagues where I can’t bid on minor leaguers, this tells me what I might need to bid.

However, in some of the deeper leagues I play in, Bret’s list isn’t of much use. Two of the expert leagues I’m in allow owners to stash minor leaguers, and the reserve lists are deep enough that even in non-keeper formats the top prospects that might make it up in 2013 are long gone. Speculation also runs rampant in these types of cutthroat leagues. If you think you’re going to be the lucky soul that snags Christian Yelich a week before his call-up, forget about it. Yelich is already owned in Tout Wars and in most deep leagues with any appreciable reserve depth.

If you’re anything like me, trading can sometimes be a scary proposition, especially if your team is shaping up to be a contender. Nothing is worse than an ill-advised trade initiating a team’s downward spiral when maintaining the status quo of players would have been the better option.

As unpleasant as the outcome of a trade can be, equally as displeasing is the feeling of discomfort during negotiations.  I’m sure you’ve felt before the pressure to respond decisively to an offer and maybe even formulate a logical counter of your own when really you just want to avoid making any drastic decisions.

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The Giants saw enough from Ryan Vogelsong in his first season back from oblivion that they gave him a new contract that could keep him in San Francisco through the 2014 season. In 2012, Vogelsong picked up right where he left off in 2011, but that success story has not continued thus far in 2013.

To date, opponents have hit .323 against him with a 939 OPS and a .370 batting average on balls in play. Those numbers are a dramatic spike from the past two seasons, when batters hit .243 against him with just a 680 OPS and a .286 BABIP.

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Most fantasy web sites and other resources do little if any analysis on playing for next year, or what is known less elegantly as “dumping.” Some analysts refuse to even acknowledge that it is part of the game and advise that it is always best to trade with this year in mind and worry about future consequences next year.

In reality, if you’re in a keeper league, you will probably have to give up and play for next year sooner or later. If other teams are building rosters for 2014 around cheap players such as Bryce Harper, Matt Harvey, and Shelby Miller, and you are sitting back while your team languishes in seventh place with little hope of winning, you are not doing yourself any favors.

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Selling high on fast starters is largely a myth these days. There is simply too much information available for fantasy gamers. Not all fast starts are created equal, though, and sometimes it pays to inquire on the availability of some of these players. Occasionally, owners will feel like they are selling at peak value, and now is the time to make a deal with them. In other cases, those owners are selling a player at peak value, and it is best to avoid acquiring him now. The key is determining which hot players are likely to sustain their high level of success.

There were quite a few players for me to pick from, and I opted to eliminate superstars from the discussion. Superstars do great things, and telling you that Miguel Cabrera will continue to play well and is worth acquiring isn't terribly useful. With that in mind, I selected four hitters that had an ADP outside the top 100 at the end of March for NFBC leagues.

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In Kurt Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus, Eugene Debs Hartke spends the latter half of the novel teaching inmates in a prison in upstate New York. While he was able to teach some of his students successfully, some were merely interested in using Hartke as a walking encyclopedia.

(some of the inmates) used me as an ambulatory Guinness Book of World Records, asking me who the oldest person in the world was, the richest one, the woman who had had the most babies, and so on.

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This year’s player profile for Fernando Rodney closed with this note: “The Rays' 2013 option on Rodney pays him $2.5 million. If he's only half as good as he was last year, he'll still be a bargain.”

So far, the Rays, their fans (save your tired jokes), and fantasy owners wish he was even a fourth as good as he was last year. The Archer is struggling to hit his targets in 2013.

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With the completion of Monday’s slate of games, we are officially one-sixth of the way through the season, as every team has played at least 28 games, or 17 percent of its allotted 162. Exactly half of the league has actually hit the one-fifth mark, having played 20 percent of its games, but the Twins and Royals finished off the first sixth of their seasons on Monday. We have also turned the calendar on the season’s first month, and the accumulation of data from that month is giving us some useful information.

For example, did you know that the Oakland Athletics lead all of baseball with 174 runs? They have 10 more runs than the Detroit Tigers and Colorado Rockies, who sit tied for second with 164 (because 174-10 = 164!). The A’s also have three more games played than the Tigers and two more than the Rockies. That doesn’t diminish their runs-scored achievement, but it does send them to the bottom of that trio when you look at runs per game: The Tigers have 5.47, the Rockies 5.29, and the A’s 5.27. Sitting eighth in total runs scored are the Cleveland Indians.

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Evaluating players based on lineup position is a tricky science. On one hand, it can have a dramatic impact on a player’s value. Take a guy batting eighth in an NL lineup, move him second, and it can be as much as a $5 boost. On the other hand, batting lineups are fickle constructs, so sometimes it is best not to put too much stock in where a player is hitting at the moment and focus on skills instead.

Lineup position also has an obvious compounding effect—that is, players who are already hitting well tend to be the ones who benefit from moving up in the order, and vice versa. Still, whether through injury or merit, when a player has moved into a more (or less) favorable hitting position, it’s worth reviewing who has seen their value affected thus far in 2013. 

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Pre-season bold predictions lists are totally overdone these days. I mean, who even does those anyway. So lame. This, on the other hand, is where the real fun is. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second annual installment of Bret’s bold predictions based on April’s small samples.

This type of exercise provides a different challenge than a standard March bold predictions piece. Not only does it take into account the players who you consider “your guys,” but you also have to maneuver through which April performances are sustainable and which are not. In other words, it’s time to separate the Chris Sheltons from the Cliff Lees.

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I planned to write about Kevin Slowey regardless of how he performed on Tuesday night. He is a longtime favorite of mine who has looked great early on with his best work coming in that Tuesday effort against the Mets, as he went eight strong allowing just a single run on four hits with eight strikeouts. He walked nobody. In fact, he has a 14-to-0 K:BB in his last two outings, spanning 14 innings. I won’t fault you for not remembering Slowey.

He was pretty good in his first “full” season with the Twins back in 2008, throwing 160 1/3 innings of 3.99 ERA and 1.15 WHIP ball, along with a sharp 5.1 K:BB. After that, it was a series of disappointments, as he was plagued by injuries and home runs. I remained enamored with the K:BB rates, though. From 2009-2011 (he didn’t pitch at the MLB level in 2012), he had a 5.01 ERA and 1.35 WHIP over 305 2/3 innings, but a sparkling 4.6 K:BB. If you played in any leagues with me, you remember Slowey as “that guy that Paul keeps taking and acting like he got one over on us with his last-round pick.” Like any great setup, I was just waiting for the payoff that was due to come five years later.

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The start to Nate McLouth’s 2013 is one of the more surprising stories in the season’s opening month. The 31-year-old outfielder has a .351/.451/.486 triple-slash line and has already amassed eight stolen bases. That is a stark difference from a guy with a .251/.339/.423 career slash line who has never stolen more than 23 bases in any season. McLouth was a productive fantasy player from ages 25 to 27 before falling into a tailspin in 2010 that continued into 2012. Since landing in Baltimore, McLouth has hit .290/.373/.449 in 325 plate appearances, once again becoming a relevant fantasy option in all formats.

How has he gone from a spare part to a vital cog of a major-league offense?

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