Opinion

History shows that young pitchers can run into serious trouble if they are pushed too far, too fast.  There is even a semi-official term for this occurrence.

The "Verducci Effect" is named for Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, who originally called this phenomenon the "Year After Effect."  The theory is based on the idea that pitchers under the age of 25 who have 30-inning increases year over year tend to underperform.

For the Philadelphia Phillies, the biggest worry coming into spring training was probably centered around which nickname was best for their amazing rotation. The Fantastic Four, Four Aces, Four Horseman, R2C2, Mound Rushmore (nice), or Phour Loco.

My personal favorite, being a rap fan, is Fat Joe and the Terror Squad. It gets bonus points for incorporating the entire rotation into the nickname, since the starters have been making it a point to always include Joe Blanton.

Is it really fantasy baseball season again?

I'm still exhausted from last year, when the struggles of Mark Teixeira had me acting like the overstressed black police captain in every 1980s buddy cop movie you ever saw, popping Tums by the handful and saying things like, "I'm getting too old for this shit."

Prospects are strange animals. They all develop different, they progress different and produce wildly different careers. So, in a nutshell, knowing when a prospect is ready comes down to one simple formula.

It depends.

That could be the worst lead in the history of journalism, one that gets my editor shaking his virtual fist at me in an email. It's really true, though. Aside from the once in a generation prospects that we recall being highly touted, we just don't know what we'll have until they progress.

There has been a lot of excitement over the farm system of the New York Yankees the last year or two, and much of it justified. But you can forget about Adam Warren being any sort of prospect worthy of such commotion.

Domonic Brown is the tenth best prospect in the majors according the ESPN.com's analyst Keith Law. Recently, Brown fractured his hamate bone in his hand. Surgery will be required, and he will have to miss 4-6 weeks.

This is a blessing for the Phillies. It is never a good thing when a player gets injured, but this injury is not necessarily a bad thing. Ben Francisco is in line for the starting right field job.

This week on "Remember When…." We are going all the way back to the early Nineties when a 25 year-old kid came up for half a season to turn the Yankee faithful into believers. Kevin Maas was going to be the next Babe Ruth.

Arthur Daley joined the New York Times in 1926. Sixteen years later, he started his outstanding column, "Sports of the Times," which he wrote until 1973.

Daley respected statistics (yes, statistics existed before sabermetrics), but he also respected what his eyes saw. In 1954, as he had done numerous times, Daley eschewed statistics and played a hunch.

There are few "sure things" in life. Some that come to mind are death and taxes, which are not exactly what most people like to think about. But, with the baseball season less than four weeks away, lets take a look at each team's "money player" for the 2011 season. "Sure thing" will be defined as anybody who has and will put up consistent numbers over a minimum of a three year period. We aren't looking for flashes in the pan as much as legitimate stars who have been and will be consistent throughout this season and their career. 

“Brennan Boesch is an equal opportunity slugger. Right field, left field, centerfield; right handed pitcher, left handed pitcher—it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t just box himself into hitting home runs! Singles, doubles, triples and even a grand slam are all on the stat line of this young rookie’s major league career. The kid is swinging a golden bat right now and for one, I don’t see him stopping any time soon.”

-Andrew Kulha, Summer 2010