Baseball – Jose Pagan, A.J. Burnett, Hal Trosky Jr., Jeremy Guthrie

Jose Pagan (b. 1935) was a shortstop-third baseman for the Giants and Pirates.  In the decisive Game  #7 of the 1971 World Series, his eighth inning double knocked in Willie Stargell for the game-winning/series-winning run. fairandunbalancedblog  

Let’s start by looking at what went wrong for Burnett this past season. A.J. Burnett’s ERA was just awful for a fantasy starter. His FIP and xFIP, however, indicates that he could be in for some improvement. His 4.77 FIP isn’t great, of course, but his 3.86 xFIP offers hope for some type of rebound. The reason for the large gap between Burnett’s ERA and xFIP likely is a result of Burnett’s horrible 17.0% home run rate. That home run rate was the worst among all qualified starters this past season, even worse than Bronson Arroyo, who gave up 46 home runs. The silver lining is that with a home run rate that high, things are likely to regress towards the mean this upcoming season. This also isn’t the first time Burnett has experienced a huge spike in home runs. In 2007, Burnett’s home run rate jumped to 17.7%. The next season, it dropped to 9.6% — slightly below his career average. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/should-you-draft-a-j-burnett/

Hal Trosky, Jr. grew up with a great model to emulate while dreaming of becoming a big league player. His father, Hal Trosky, Sr. was a major league star, who, if not for World War II may have made a very strong case for enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame. As it was, Senior had a star career that ended after the 1946 season when Junior was 10 years old. By that time the younger Trosky had seen enough to know what he wanted to do with his life- play baseball. By the time he was in high school, Trosky, Jr. had become a talented player and was drawing a lot of interest from professional teams. As a senior in Cedar Rapids, Iowa he hit .667 and had scouts from nearly half the major league teams in attendance at his games. The connections his father had made during his time in the game helped guide the young man’s decision making, and in 1954 he settled on signing with the Chicago White Sox after making a good connection with team owner Charlie Comiskey, Jr., who shared the commonality of being baseball progeny. http://seamheads.com/2012/02/12/hal-trosky-jr-a-stubborn-baseball-player/

Jeremy Guthrie may be going mile-high, but Coors Field isn't quite the terror it was in the 1990s. Homers are likely to be a problem, given Guthrie's 41% career flyball rate, but Camden Yards wasn't a great place for him either, and the difference may not be that drastic. Though he'll be going to the world's most feared hitter's park (and owner of second place on ESPN's park factor list) he'll be staying away from Boston, Toronto, and New York (the third, fourth, and sixth-most hitter friendly parks in baseball) on the road, replacing them with trips to San Franciso, San Diego, and Los Angeles, so the park change isn't as bad as it sounds. Of course, that isn't counting the hitters themselves. Pitching for Baltimore is more than pitching for a bad team, it's facing four of baseball's toughest offenses night after night. The general quality difference between the AL and the NL should help, too. Overall, the change in environment should be a wash at the worst for Guthrie's rate stats and strikouts, and could well give them a boost. http://www.rotoauthority.com/

Baseball – Woodie Fryman, Anthony Rizzo, Jeremy Guthrie, Dave Nilsson

Woodie Fryman (b. 1940) was a reliable pitcher as a starter and then a reliever for several teams in a long career that spanned from the 1960s to 1980s.  He was a two-time All Star (1968 and 1976) and is a member of the Montreal Expos Hall of Fame. fairandunbalancedblog  

Anthony Rizzo, Cubs: With the Cubs completely changing the identity of the organization, the young slugger will have plenty of opportunity to impress. And please, take the random at-bats from his 2011 major league promotion with a grain of salt. Rizzo may need time to mature as a hitter, but the tools are there for him to be a great hitter in both fantasy and real life baseball. For a guy just entering his age-22 season, he’s done a lot more than other first base prospects at this stage of their career. In shallower keeper leagues, now would be a fine time to jump on him, as you will find few other first basemen his age with this type of tools and opportunity. Rizzo has the most upside of this group, with a great chance to get consistent playing time, but be ready for some ups and downs. http://www.minorleaguerundown.com/2012/02/06/top-10-fantasy-prospects-at-first-base-for-2012/

In the past five seasons, Jeremy Guthrie has absorbed 65 Oriole losses. In other words, 17% of the time they played “Hard Day’s Night” as the stadium cleared out, an L was going next to Guthrie’s name on the score sheet. In those five seasons, there have been well over 100 pitchers-of-record in Baltimore. For perspective, loss-machine Daniel Cabrera did not account for as many defeats (59) in his five-year reign as Oriole whipping boy. Nobody has taken the brunt of this era of Baltimore baseball harder than Jeremy Guthrie http://baltimoresportsreport.com/jeremy-guthrie-workhorse-of-a-pointless-era-in-oriole-baseball-24932.html

Dave Nilsson is Australia’s number-one batting hero. In 1992, he became the second big-leaguer trained Down Under; through the end of the 2011 season, 25 more of his countrymen had followed him. That group started with Australia’s best-remembered pitcher, Graeme Lloyd. Nilsson and Lloyd formed the first all-Aussie battery in the majors with the Milwaukee Brewers on April 14, 1993.The sample of Aussie batsmen is quite small: eight out of 27 major-leaguers. So far only two have come to the plate 1,000 times or more in the majors: Nilsson and the man who preceded him, Craig Shipley. http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/531676ce-0