Key Stats: Justin Verlander had the most strikeouts, innings, wins, and best WHIP among qualifying starting pitchers last season. That along with the third best ERA made him the best starting pitcher in all of fantasy baseball last season, and is good enough in these rankings to make him the top pitcher again heading into this season.

Skeptics  Say: Month to month, Verlander never seriously struggled. The highest WHIP he had in any month was 1.10 in August (by comparison the 30^th ranked starting pitcher at Mock Draft Central, Gio Gonzalez, could only muster a 1.14 WHIP in his best month). That said, Verlander did not look like the first pitcher to be named an MVP in two decades last October. He had an ERA in the fives as he faced tough competition in high stress games. He could have been worn out from a heavy workload on a team that needed every out he helped them get last season. The 271 combined innings that Verlander threw was almost 50 more than he fired in 2010. no comments

The Chicago White Sox farm system is easily the worst in baseball. A big part of the reason for their putrid system is that they've shied away from spending money in the draft. The old saying goes, you get what you pay for. In this case, the saying is correct.

Key Stats:  Understatement of the year forthcoming… Clayton Kershaw is good. Only 24 and entering his 5^th season of MLB duty, you have to ask how much better can he get? You would assume at some point he can’t get any better and would hit a plateau of excellence. He ran away with the Cy Young last year for the NL with a 21-5 record, 2.28 ERA, 248 K, 54 BB and a 0.98 WHIP. It’s easy to look at that line and think “Regression”, so you look at his peripherals to see if you can get away with that. You see his FIP, xFIP, tERA and SIERA are all under 3.00…”Ha!” You think, “He will regress this year… all the way back to an ERA around 2.70…sigh” You look at the K’s…248 is a lot, and a strikeout percentage of 27 is high… “He can’t reach that number again” you think, “27% is unsustainable for a starter.” Then you look at his innings pitched over his career and see they have been going up by about 30 each year for the last three seasons… if that continues it would put him right around the 251 that Verlander had last season.* “Damn…He could have 248 again…”

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Key Stats: A season after having his heart questioned spending most of the year on the DL, Jacoby Ellsbury set career highs in four out of the five major categories. He also set a career high and had a league leading total number of plate appearances (take that Kevin Youkilis!). Nothing was more impressive than his 105 RBI out of the leadoff spot.

Skeptics Say: He won’t hit .366 with runners in scoring position again and won’t drive in 105 again for starters. Matching the home run numbers will also prove difficult. Ellsbury actually hit a lower percentage of fly balls last year, but many of his home runs were lasers, so it’s possible that he can get back to the high 20s or low 30s in terms of the home run production. no comments

Key Stats: Joey Votto joined Miguel Cabrera and Jose Bautista as the only players in baseball to score, drive in, and walk more than 100 times. In other words in OBP leagues, this is a top ten pick and maybe a top five pick. Votto has now driven in and scored more than 100 runs in two straight seasons.

Skeptics Say: Votto’s numbers dropped off across the board last year. The number that is most concerning to me is the steals. Votto finished with 8 steals a season after stealing 16. At a position where he truly could separate himself by running, perhaps the Reds were more cautious last year or perhaps Votto didn’t sneak up on teams as a base runner last year (his success rate went down). no comments

Key Stats: Justin Upton’s strikeout rate went down by 9% last season while he actually gained power. Upton was called up at age 19 and this is a classic case of a player developing at the Major League level. The decrease in strikeouts resulted in a 16 point gain in his average.

Skeptics Say: On the road last year Upton hit just .246 with an OPS of .767. Certainly ordinary numbers for a player taken this high in a draft, but perhaps this is the next thing for him to develop as he puts his game together. Also, given his final line of more than 30 home runs and 20 steals, this might just be picky. no comments

Well this is devastating news. According to Ken Rosenthall, FB365 favorite Ryan Madson is going to have TJ surgery. If he was part of your plans, go get Sean Marshall, if he wasn't, then you have nothing to worry about. If you were me, you have him in two leagues and needed to hit the waiver wire before you start writing an article about it. So before Cactus and Grapefruit league play have finished, the closer depth chart has gotten smaller by two. So long Ryan Madson and Joakim Soria, 2012 hardly knew ye.

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