Spring training is a rite of passage for all of the greats. 

Some experience it when they're young, while others can take a while to break with the big league camp.

In 2011, as an 18-year-old, Bryce Harper is experiencing spring training for the first time.

Baseball's top prospect (or second best, depending on who you ask) is a transcendent talent. His ceiling is as high as any player throughout baseball. 

No matter their skill level, however, every player goes into spring training with certain expectations for the upcoming season.

Every year, a handful of MLB players get really, really lucky.

A few extra seeing-eye ground balls get through the infield, and a hitter best suited to benchwarming looks like a legitimate big-league starter. A good-not-great pitcher benefits from an unusually skilled backing defense and suddenly finds his name popping up in the same sentence as "Cy Young."

One of the greatest innovations of sabermetrics is the ability to measure and isolate the element of luck in players' performances (at least, to some extent).

Click here to enter the 2011 Fantasy Baseball Team Name Contest


Here’s an early look at the N.L. 2011 Catcher rankings.

Let’s face it: Not many players actually enjoy spring training.

Most say it’s too long, and they don’t particularly enjoy putting in all of the hard work without getting any real results in the win column.

But there are a handful of players who especially hate spring training.

Some former players that fall into this category are Matt Williams and Nomar Garciaparra. Both players experienced bad injuries during spring training that derailed seasons for them.

Here are five current players who especially hate spring training.

Previously The Fantasy Fix reviewed and gave projections for the 2011 Red Sox rotation. Now its time to dive in and analyze the Fenway Fearsome positional players.

Don't forget to check out our 2011 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit

Mixed League Rotisserie Auction Values in Parentheses

Spring Training is here, and with it comes the best and worst of America's past-time.

The first games of a new season are chalk full of prospects hoping to make an impression on the big club, veterans looking for a final shot in the big leagues, and more than anything else, an abundance of hope that this might just be the year.

Unfortunately, a new season inevitably brings injuries.

Seasons, even careers, can be ruined in meaningless games. Championship hopefuls can find themselves on the outside looking in at a playoff race.

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.

This is a 2 part series in which I will analyze a current Cy Young Predictor formula, offer a replacement formula to account for the change in philosophy for the Cy Young voters with the growing influence of new-age statistics (sabermetrics), and use this new formula to project the Cy Young race in 2011 and beyond.

Numbers.  Fantasy Baseball is defined by them.  Standard 5x5 leagues use 10 of them.  These 10 numbers are probably the most important numbers you will think about from March to September.  But should they be?

Fantasy Baseball has come quite a ways in the last few years.  Nowadays sabermetrics have given us new numbers with acronyms like wOBA, BABIP, xFIP, and LOB percent.  These strange figures can be overwhelming to those who are unfamiliar with them. 

The story line on Yankee phenom, Jesus Montero, has been that he is a can’t miss major league hitter.  Before the 2010 season, he was listed by Baseball America as the No. 4 overall prospect in all of baseball.

But the down side to his story was that he might never be a major league catcher.