I love the home run derby (as with most things baseball). It's a contest of power that proves nothing, but it puts on a great show for the fans. Fans want to be able to debate all of the nuances of the game and again, while the home run derby proves nothing, it provides fodder for such debates.

This season, just for the heck of it, I'm going to attempt to handicap the Home Run Derby.

Some great links:

1) Does Mark Cuban have the cheddar to buy the Cubs? Will the owners conspire against him?

2) Jose Guillen is team cancer, calls his teammates babies.

3) San Diego LHP Brian Matusz scouting report.

4) Entertaining the idea of David Price for Albert Pujols...

Rotogod here. Today I will be kicking off a three-part series in which I'm going to talk about a very important phase in the fantasy baseball season: the one-third or two month mark of the season. It is at the one-third mark that fantasy owners can begin to more accurately assess players now that their performances are fairly well established. Here are my One-Third All-Stars...

With the MLB amateur draft approaching, I thought it would be a good time to start profiling some of the young talent that may be coming to a team near you. Generally speaking, this draft does not have a consensus top prospect, like a Justin Upton or David Price, so it's anyone's guess who the top pick will be and the Tampa Bay Rays are thought to be deciding between Buster Posey, Tim Beckham and Pedro Alvarez.

I'm going to provide my draft board, based on talent and my projections for the players, followed by a profile of the top talent in the draft, as I see it: Vanderbilt's Pedro Alvarez.

Sports Illustrated is reporting that Cincinnati Reds top prospect Jay Bruce will be making his debut today against the Pittsburgh Pirates...

1) Are the Dodgers gearing up for a Clayton Kershaw Debut? 2) Los Angeles Angels will host the 2010 All-Star Game, Los Angeles Dodgers will host the 2009 World Baseball Classic. 3) Joba Chamberlain and his crazy antics. 4) Weekend MLB announcing schedule. 5) The Red Sox are Un-Stoppable. 6) The New York Yankees find themselves in a familiar hole. 7) UFC 84.

Anyone who turned on ESPN between the months of February and April was at serious risk of becoming exposed to the draft hype epidemic. Wherever or whenever you turned to catch sports highlights or news, you were sure to see Mel Kiper Jr. or Chris Mortensen telling you what it means for Player X to have a better 40-time that Player O. It all became one big circus, as it does every year.

This just in: the New York Yankees are now preparing Joba Chamberlain for a spot in their rotation. Chamberlain will now begin increasing his innings totals until he is able to pitch the 100 pitches per game necessary to start.

Today I will cover some of 2008's top prospects, as a continuation of the last time we checked in, covering Cincinnati Reds prospect Jay Bruce, Los Angeles Angels prospect Brandon Wood, Los Angeles Dodgers prospect Clayton Kershaw and St. Louis Cardinals prospect Colby Rasmus.

Fantasy baseball expert Rotogod discusses the legitimacy of the performance of Chipper Jones, Lance Berkman, Jon Lester, Kevin Youkilis, Eric Gagne, Ervin Santana and Josh Hamilton in this weeks look at hot and slow starts.

I love the All-Star game. At no other point in the season does more discussion take place on player performance, merit, entitlement, etc. on a game that doesn't even matter. Still, I vote. It's a yearly event and I love it.

Daisuke "Dice-K" Matsuzaka had better watch out. There is a new Japanese phenom on the horizon. Yu Darvish, the 6? 5? half-Japanese, half-Iranian fire-baller has already won the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young award as well as the equivalent of the World Series MVP and he's only 21.

Yu Darvish, the 21 year-old 6' 5" half-Japanese, half-Iranian may be the next Japanese star to take the states by storm.

Some sweet links:

1) Greg Maddux scouting report from today and from his prep days.

2) Big Papi and Terry Francona are going to throw down?!?

3) Jon Papelbon teaches Hideki Okajima how to play craps...in the warning track dirt.

4) Paul DePodesta talks about the effects of PETCO park on SD Padres.

5) Top-10 high school hitters in the amateur draft.

6) Eric Gagne and Jason Isringhausen are bad at saving things.

April baseball is a lot of fun, the new season is still exciting and fans get wrapped up in emerging story-lines. Among these, Florida Marlins sit atop the National League East, beating out the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies; the Chicago Cubs, on the brink of their 100th seasons without a World Series, are looking poised to make a run; and the Colorado Rockies are looking lost despite winning the NL pennant in 2007.

Here are ten things to look for in May.