A.J. Burnett

It's hard enough to find five good starting pitchers. But the high occurrence of injuries to pitchers in this day and age commonly forces teams to utilize at least eight or nine starting pitchers to get through a 162-game season.

As a result, certain characteristics have become extremely important when assembling a starting rotation. Without a good combination of consistency, durability and reliability, things can get ugly very quickly. 

Every MLB team has an idea of how they think their offseason will play out, or at least how they would like it to, but rarely do things go according to plan during the MLB offseason.

Whether it's a surprise player hitting the trade market and changing the market for other players at his position, a free-agent signing with an unexpected suitor, a player opting against re-signing when he's expected to and hitting the open market or something else altogether, there is no shortage of reasons an offseason can be altered.

From an outside perspective, Major League Baseball's offseason can be difficult to understand. Unlike the NBA, NFL and NHL, a salary cap isn't present to handcuff the ability of an organization to retain stars with expiring pacts.

Yet, despite the lack of a unified budget for each team, owners and front office executives have limits for each player during the hot-stove season.

Of the free agents who will be able to negotiate and sign with new teams beginning on Tuesday, November 5, several of them had an extended opportunity to increase (or decrease) their value in the postseason. 

While only a handful of innings pitched or a small sample size of at-bats normally wouldn't move the needle very much on a veteran player's perceived value, a player's ability to produce in the playoffs certainly can. 

Here are 10 players whose asking price has likely risen or fallen since the end of the regular season.

In this day and age where most pitchers can’t go a few years, much less one, without having some sort of elbow or shoulder trouble pop up, it’s very difficult to decide which ones are more at risk than others. 

As a fan of the two Bay Area baseball teams, most of my observed impressions of players around Major League Baseball are based on their performances against the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's.

In fantasy baseball, everyone knows Albert Pujols is the best player available.  If you have the first pick in a draft, you take him and go get a snack because you have two rounds till your next pick.  

But Pujols isn't going to win you the league.  

If he gets hurt, you he might lose you your league. If you don't do a good job with the rest of your draft, it's not going to matter what Pujols does. 

Man. Talk about living on the edge.

There is not a single player on the New York Yankees‘ roster who is going to have more of an influence on the eventual outcome of the team’s 2011 season than A.J. Burnett.

Finding strikeouts late in your draft is not something that is particularly easy to do.  Generally, one of the reasons pitchers fall on draft day is because they lack in one area (most notably, no upside in strikeouts).  However, there are a few pitchers out there who could significantly help you in the category.  Here are five pitchers who are being picked after No. 216, on average, and I have projected to strikeout at least 170 batters in 2011.