Just want to let my readers now that I’m migrating over to a different system for hosting and administrating the108stitches.com. As a result I won’t be posting tonight and will return hopefully tomorrow once the move has been completed.  Thanks for your patience.

We all have our sleepers and busts and while I haven’t written a post specific to the topic (Sleeper Showdowns come close), I am more interested to hear your thoughts…that is unless you lack what Everett Ulysses McGill calls, “The capacity for abstract thought,” in the classic movie “O’ Brother Where Art Thou.”  Please submit your sleeper to me with a small paragraph explanation why you believe they’re a sleeper and I’ll put together a post of reader sleepers later this week. Simply post a comment on this thread and I’ll sift through them and pick the best ones! If you are worried your fellow owners in one of your leagues will read it and snipe you at your upcoming draft or auction, we can preserve your anonymity.

Just a quick post to direct your attention over to my player rankings page. I made updates to the page today to address the John Lackey injury and many other developments.

While it was certainly disappointing to see Angels’ ace John Lackey go down with a triceps injury on Saturday, I got great pleasure out of keeping my mouth shut until right after a competing owner paid $32 for him in one of my league auctions. I suppose it had a little something to do with the fact said owner had, on multiple occasions, bid me up on a player after the bidding was essentially closed. Regardless, an Angels team already dealing with Kelvim Escobar being sidelined until May with shoulder tightness, are scrambling.

This would seemingly give top prospect Nick Adenhart a chance to grab a rotation spot, but he has extremely minimal experience above Double-A, making it less likely that he serves as the temporary solution. Obviously with both Escobar and Lackey out, Ervin Santana is suddenly a lock for a rotation spot and the guy that could join him is Dustin Moseley.

Moseley was mildly intriguing in the first half of 2007, when he was an extreme groundballer and posted a 2.41 ERA and 1.07 WHIP, but for whatever reason, those few things he seemed to do right in the first half escaped him after the break. At least with Adenhart there is obvious upside, even if both the Angels and fantasy owners have to navigate through the bumps in the road along the way. All things considered, I think keeper league owners shoud definitely target Adenhart, but there isn’t a league format in which I would consider Moseley.

As for Lackey, the mood was obviously grim in Angels camp. “It’s going to be a huge blow,” fellow starter Joe Saunders told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s definitely not good. John is our horse, the leader of the pitching staff and a leader of the team. Our Nos. 1 and 2 starters are not doing so hot right now. We’re going to have to step up our game.”

Lackey claims that his right elbow locked up pretty significantly on Saturday and he was diagnosed with a triceps strain and expected to miss at least four weeks. That’s four weeks until he resumes baseball activities. The most notable part of the report is that Lackey will need at least four minor league starts to build up his strength, which sidelines him until mid-May. My player rankings will obviously change (hopefully today despite my fighting a sinus infection) and I expect Lackey to fall from ninth among starting pitchers to somewhere in the 15-16 range.

Nationals outfielder Wily Mo Pena, a popular sleeper source for power this season, underwent an MRI exam that showed a significant tear in his left oblique muscle. He’s expected to miss approximately a month with the malady.

“We were willing to give the guy the opportunity to get 500 at-bats, and now another year is going to go by and next year we’ll probably be hearing the same thing about him,” Nationals manager Manny Acta told the Associated Press.

This would theoretically mean another popular sleeper I have trumpeted on this site (Elijah Dukes) would get a starting job, but he left Friday’s split squad game after straining his right hamstring. “It was almost like a little strain or cramp kind of feeling,” Dukes said. “I knew that if I could get up that quick, it couldn’t be a big deal, but it’s always scary to get that feeling that I could be hurt.”

He’s considered day-to-day, and is still the favorite to be the starter in left field when the season begins. That said, he didn’t seem real confident in that role, telling the AP, “I don’t know what my role is going to be,” Dukes said. “When he comes back, I’ll probably be the fourth guy again, so we’ll see what happens.”

What? Isn’t that like saying, “I’m thankful for the opportunity, but I’m not sure how effective I’ll be?”

Nevertheless, count me among the believers that Dukes has made significant progress mentally and appears as though he’s not as much of an off-the-field liability. The only negative development with this news is that you probably have to bump up Dukes auction value a couple bucks by the time your auction or draft rolls around, because despite the injury it still seems as though many more of your competing owners will be aware of him.

NOTE: Yes I’m aware that Pena is on the Nationals now, but I couldn’t resist using this picture of him getting his recommended daily allowance of your Louisville Slugger brand of fiber supplements.

I’ve read plenty of research this offseason that claims the pool of available stolen bases has become much more concentrated and I believe there is some truth to that. Since 1871, 275,557 bases have been stolen at the major league level. Consider the number of players who swiped 20 bags or more in a season over the last five years.

• 2002 = 33 players
• 2003 = 26 players
• 2004 = 27 players
• 2005 = 27 players
• 2006 = 35 players
• 2007 = 42 players

It’s tough for me to imagine that 42 number free falling in the matter of one season and with that many stolen bases available, I’d prefer to get as many as possible from bargain sources. Here are a my three favorite sleeper sources for steals this season.

1) Eugenio Velez, SS/2b, Giants
Don’t be fooled by the fact Velez doesn’t appear on the Giants depth chart right now, he leads the team with 14 spring hits and nine spring steals. The 25-year old outfielder has been groomed as a utility infielder this spring and considering Omar Vizquel is banged up and the second base tandem of Ray Durham and Kevin Frandsen are fairly average, it’s reasonable to assume he’ll pick up his fair share of at bats. He has stolen 118 bases in the minors over the last two seasons and while his ability to get on base consistently is still in question, he’s certainly a solid speculative steals source.

2) Ryan Theriot, SS, Cubs
Unlike Velez, most owners in your fantasy league probably will recognize Theriot’s name. That said, he’s going undrafted in some league formats over on Mock Draft Central, with an ADP of 256.43, making his clearly still a sleeper value. He stole 28 bases in 537 at bats with the Cubbies last season and news came from the Chicago Sun-Times this week that he’ll serve as the team’s leadoff man to start the season, a role that just may last well into the season. He consistently stole bases throughout his minor league career, so it’s a skill he obviously owns and at the top of the lineup he should get even more opportunities to rack up the steals.

3) Nate McLouth, OF, Pirates
McLouth was largely forgotten about behind Jason Bay, Chris Duffy, Nyjer Morgan, et. al, but then he hit 13 homers and stole 22 bases in 329 at bats in 2007, firmly stating his case to be the starting center fielder in Pittsburgh. He’s still battling Morgan for the starting job this season, but he has a strong set of perheripheral stats that suggest he has a great shot at not only winning the starting job, but being productive in it. His 11% walk rate and 77% contact rate suggest there is enough upside to justify an end game pick or $1-2 bucks at the auction table this spring.

In case you’ve missed it, I have had a great blog in my blogroll for a while now. It’s called Disabled List Informer and it’s author Chris Neault is a licensed sports Physical Therapist who just so happens to be a fantasy baseball junkie as well. He offers a very thorough and well written analysis of Giants phenom Tim Lincecum and examines the common thought in scouting circles that his pitching mechanics are the harbinger of a serious injury to come. Check out the post here.

As I sit and watch “No Country for Old Men” for the first time since I saw it in the theater, I struggle to put into words how incredible of a writer Cormac McCarthy is and how ridiculously talented the Coen Brothers are. I am never afraid to admit when something works, and like McCarthy and the Coens, the formula that many sports blogs out there use regularly works. Beyond that, I truly believe that sometimes fantasy owners simply need to read and digest the news. Sometimes they don’t want someone to regurgitate the news and suggest or almost demand they react in a certain way. Hence, my reasoning behind simply providing the following links.

Brewers scratch Ryan Braun from lineup due to a sore right Achilles’ tendon.

A couple of Reds pitching prospects not named Homer are turning heads this spring.

The Price is right for the Rays, just not quite yet.

The Cubbies move shortstop Ryan Theriot to leadoff, which could foretell of a spike in fantasy value due to more base stealing opportunities.

The Jays gain one injury prone pitcher in reliever Armando Benitez and lose a promising young hurler for the season due to a torn labrum.

Metabolic and/or mitochondrial abnormalities could end Rays outfielder Rocco Baldelli’s career.

Cardinals pitcher Chris Carpenter finally got back on the mound on Tuesday.

A promising spring for Athletics outfielder Carlos Gonzalez takes a brief detour.

Brewers future ace Yovani Gallardo had a very promising day in his recovery from minor knee surgery.

Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett will miss the entire opening series in Japan with his latest injury.

A back injury may force Twins pitcher and popular fantasy sleeper Scott Baker to the DL to start the season

My “Line of Questioning” series of articles over at Mock Draft Central continues with a look at the AL West. In this series I’m looking at the top 10 questions that I think fantasy owners want answered in each division. There are probably other questions left out that you’d like answers to, but I picked the ones I thought were the most interesting. You’ll find the AL West article here.

In a recent conversation with one of my colleagues at my day job, we discussed the transformation of the music industry from the beginning of the digital age with compact discs to the current download-a-minute age. The latter provides a fix for those music aficionados who simply must have their favorite band’s new release right now without the inconvenience of leaving their couch. It’s this kind of instant gratification that is personified in fantasy baseball owner’s quickness to dismiss the highly regarded prospects that don’t produce gaudy numbers at the same speedy rate they download the latest Vampire Weekend album.

For those who haven’t falling into the pool of anxiety stricken, impatient owners I offer you the post-hype prospects. The luster may have worn off to a certain degree, but the future is just as bright for many of these guys. The following players have appeared on one of Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects lists over the last three years and at least some of them have seemingly been discarded by fantasy owners.

THE POST-HYPE PROSPECTS (in no particular order)

1. Dioner Navarro, C, Rays
2. Ian Stewart, 3b, Rockies
3. Brandon Wood, 3b, Angels
4. Matt Garza, SP, Rays
5. Alex Gordon, 3b, Royals
6. Jeremy Hermida, OF, Marlins
7. Carlos Quentin, OF, White Sox
8. Scott Olsen, SP, Marlins
9. Lastings Milledge, OF, Nationals
10. Jeff Mathis, C, Angels
11. Brandon League, RP, Blue Jays
12. Josh Barfield, 2b, Indians
13. Fred Lewis, OF, Giants
14. Neil Walker, 3b, Pirates
15. Edwin Jackson, SP, Rays

There are probably other players I’ve omitted, but either way you get the point. A couple players on this list have started to warm up the hype machine again, namely Jeremy Hermida, Alex Gordon, Brandon Wood, and Carlos Quentin. These guys have all had ridiculous potential at some point in their career and while some owners have already lost patience with him, they don’t figure to come at a bargain price on draft day.

A couple guys on the list who I’m particularly intrigued by are Navarro and Barfield.

In the case of Navarro, he was the Yankees catcher of the future just four years ago and he’s still just 24. A couple reasons for optimism include his solid contact rate and increasing fly ball rate, which portends of a breakout in the power department. The other reason for enthusiasm is his promising September line (.310 with three homers, 16 runs, and 10 RBI) . With little other than Shawn Riggans challenging him for at bats this season, he should have an opportunity to build upon that late season success.

Then there is Barfield, who was a highly regarded prospect before hitting .162 in April and eventually being passed up by Asdrubal Cabrera for the starting second base job in Cleveland. Cabrera is a solid player in his own right and might hold onto the job, but Barfield is too talented to not catch on elsewhere. His contact rate was climbing steadily before it dipped last season but it’s important to note that his speed skills and fly ball rate are still both on the rise and with a little more luck and opportunity, the breakout that has alluded him could become a reality.

Sure it takes plenty of faith to invest in some of these failed talents, but it’s just too premature to write them off entirely and while your competition is drafting this year’s hot prospect 10 rounds too early, you can sit on guys like Navarro and scoop them up in your drafts final rounds. The return on that investment may not be quite as significant, but neither will the cost.