Martin Prado

The Miami Marlins prevented third baseman Martin Prado from hitting free agency at season's end by signing him to a contract extension Tuesday. 

The Miami Marlins' offseason overhaul continued on Friday, as the team reportedly struck a deal with the New York Yankees for super-utility man Martin Prado and right-handed pitcher David Phelps. 

The Marlins officially announced the move on Twitter:

New York Yankees star Martin Prado is expected to miss the rest of the regular season after an emergency appendectomy.

Meredith Marakovits of the YES Network passed along the news:

The Yankees later confirmed the news of Prado appendectomy (via Danny Knobler):

The Atlanta Braves are one of the hottest teams in baseball right now, having won nine of their last 10 games.

And, they've done it with a combination of pitching and hitting.

With their recent success, and the early-season questions of needing to acquire another outfielder to take the place of Martin Prado, I'm wondering if it's best for the Braves to stand pat with their lineup.

We all knew coming into this season that the Braves' pitching was going to be solid. But we also felt like that the offense was going to improve. With this combination, the Braves were thought to be one of the best teams in the NL. Well, at the moment, only one of those beliefs has come true.

Our 2011 fantasy baseball projections will be released one-by-one until the top 100 players have been revealed. These rankings consider past achievements, current performance and expected future results based on standard 5×5 H2H settings.

Question: Who leads second basemen in batting average since 2008?

Chase Utley? Robinson Cano? Dustin Pedroia?

Wrong times three.

Martin Prado was as valuable as anyone in baseball to his team in the first half of the season in 2010 playing second base.

His MVP-caliber season was derailed in the second half as injuries kept him out of the lineup for a stretch in August, as well as the playoffs, as the Atlanta Braves were knocked out in the first round by the eventual World Series champions, the San Francisco Giants.

When the Atlanta Braves 2010 came to a close a couple weeks back at the hands of the eventual National League Champion San Francisco Giants, there was a lot of mourning at the Britt (that's me) household.

I was resigned to filling out college applications and (gasp) putting school over baseball for a couple of weeks as I bitterly refused to watch the LCS's for the thought of what might of been had Chipper Jones, Martin Prado, Billy Wagner and Kris Medlen been good-to-go for the first round of the playoffs.

What's that?

For a guy that was signed as a Minor League Free Agent prior to the 2009 season, Brooks Conrad sure has accomplished a lot for the Braves in 130 games.

In addition to accumulating a ton of nicknames ("Raw Dog" and "Dirt" being the most notable), the Magic Man from Monte Vista (that one is mine) has been involved in some of the more memorable moments in recent Braves history.

The Atlanta Braves are limping towards the finish line and on Tuesday they got some news that’s really not helping their cause.

According to MLB.com’s Mark Bowman, via Twitter, Braves 2B/3B Martin Prado will be done for the season with a hip pointer and torn oblique muscle.