It gets talked about a lot; we are living through a golden age of strikeouts in baseball. And there are plenty of potential reasons for this, which are thrown out during the discussion. Some say that it’s just a talent surge on the pitching side of the equation that will correct itself during the next cycle. Some say it’s an overall lack of a two-strike mentality among hitters in the game today. Some say the sabermetric movement has reduced the fear and shame associated with striking out. Some say it’s sunscreen.

Regardless of what the true reasoning is (though it’s likely a combination of all of the above and more), we are where we are at the major-league level. But what does that mean for minor-league strikeout rates? Are contact rates in the minors decreasing at the same level that we see across the highest level of the game? The answer is that it depends how advanced the league is.

Nick Swisher is one of my favorite players in baseball to watch play the game because I appreciate how he works a count and genuinely seems to enjoy playing the game. My favorite part about his game actually comes off the field, because he is comedic gold when you get him talking on a topic he is excited about. Take his recent assessment of teammate Justin Masterson.

Swisher was asked by Bud Shaw of the Cleveland Plain Dealer to describe teammate Justin Masterson in three words, and in the most Swisher response ever, he replied, “Power sinker, bro.” Swisher expanded his bro-view of the hurler by adding, “What’s really impressive is the number of strikeouts he’s had. Look at any great team and it starts with that number-one guy.”

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One of the first axioms I learned when I wandered into the world of sports betting was to heed Wrigley Field’s winds. Wrigley’s proximity to Lake Michigan gave it a reputation for dramatically affecting fly balls, which would inflate or deflate the game over/under on runs. If the wind was blowing out, fly balls were expected to sail out as home runs, and the total would be unusually high. A low total typically meant that winds were blowing toward home plate, suppressing fly balls.

Vegas already knew this, which unfortunately added an additional dimension to handicapping Cubs home games. Amazingly though, this advice was extremely exploitable in fantasy baseball. An “@ChC” note next to my pitcher meant a trip to Baseball Weather Analyzer or Daily Baseball Data (two sweet resources) to examine Wrigley Field’s conditions that day. Flyball pitchers sat on blow-out days and started on blow-in days.

Chris Constancio of The Hardball Times investigated the effect of winds on HR/FB rates six years ago, and he observed statistically significant results in Chicago parks. I replicated his method on data from 2007 to the present and found that the Wrigley wind effect is stronger than ever. Over 508 games, here’s how pitchers performed in HR/FB rate, ERA, and slugging percentage allowed, split by Retrosheet’s wind field:

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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.

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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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