Baseball

America's favorite past-time evolved into the first major professional sports league in the United States—Major League Baseball.

The MLB was founded in 1869, and now has 30 teams, one of them in Canada.

The nicknames of these teams helped create the names of sports teams ever since. For those of you curious baseball fans and history buffs, here are the origins of each MLB team nickname.

Note: If you are also interested in NCAA, NFL, NBA, and NHL nicknames, check out my profile for the articles.

Remember WAMCO?

For many of you, the term means nothing.

For hardcore Toronto Blue Jays fans and baseball historians, it is a reminder of greatness in Toronto.

WAMCO stood for the combination of White, Alomar, Molitor, Carter and Olerud. These players were also the one through five hitters in the Toronto batting order.

During an interesting discussion today about the greatest Toronto Blue Jays team of all time, the 1993 squad was overwhelmingly the best choice.

With 172 career starts before the age of 25, Felix Hernandez is the best pitcher in the American League.

Who's No. 2?

CC Sabathia? Justin Verlander? Jered Weaver? David Price? 

These guys are certainly all contenders, Price in particular. The 25-year-old, now the clear ace of the Rays, finished second to Hernandez in Cy Young voting last year and all signs point to him building off of his monster 2010 in 2011.

None of these guys, however, are the second-best pitcher in the American League.

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.

Shortstop is a perennial black hole in fantasy baseball.

If you are not lucky enough to have one of the Top Five picks, then you will miss out on Hanley Ramirez and Troy Tulowitzki in most leagues. These two are certifiable fantasy studs and they play shortstop on top of that. After these two players go, the position thins out and becomes an uncertain abyss.

Replacing a legend is no easy task. Just ask Chris "Izzy" Cole, Mark Wahlberg's character in Rock Star, who failed to live up to the hype Bobby Beers set forth as the front man of Steel Dragon.

Same story, different day. I swear, this sounds like a familiar plotline. A corpulent, Hispanic starting pitcher takes the mound for the Cubs, gives up multiple moonshots in his first inning of work, calls out a corner infielder for making some negligible error, and a "scuffle" breaks out in the Cubs dugout.

Lately, while scouring the Internet for any new Mets talk, I have been seeing a lot of discussion about the future of Jose Reyes with the team.  A lot of people are talking about what Reyes could be traded for or possible replacements for him next season, and they seem resigned (or in some cases even receptive) to the idea that next year, a new player will man shortstop.  

If you play in a standard 5×5 format, you can view our rankings by clicking here. 

If you play in a league that uses OBP instead of average, things change fairly significantly. Who moves up? Who moves down? 

Let’s take a look:

Neil Walker is a player that many fantasy owners have seemingly fallen in love with. 

Obviously, they don’t view him as a top option, but as a fallback choice should they miss out on their chosen target. 

My question is, exactly what is it that has people so excited?

First of all, just look at his 2010 production: