Hello friends.

After sashaying our way through the AL graveyard last week, it's time to hit the senior circuit and try to glean what we can about where the new and old fantasy values may lie come the trade deadline.

But here's the thing about the National League - they might only have three or four real championship contenders but they have a whole mess of teams that probably aren't good enough to realistically do any damage in the postseason but aren't so bad that they can sell selling to their fanbase. So, they'll do what mediocre teams like this do every year; be buyers of discounted parts that won't actively change their championship futures, when they should be sellers in a market mostly devoid of great pieces.

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Hello friends.

With the first half nearly in the rearview mirror, it's a good time to go around the league and take the fantasy heartbeats of our 30 possible champions.* Wait, Nicklaus - aren't you jumping the gun quite a bit? Everyone knows the All-Star Break isn't for three weeks, so what are you playing at? Well, real hoopers know that the truth is in the games played, and by that measure, all teams will cross the 81-game threshold by the end of this week, with all but five clubs having already reached 78 games.

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Hello friends.

Unfortunately, we have to start with some bad news - I have a fever. And judging by the questions coming in during our weekly Monday chats, a lot of you have one too. But good news! The only prescription for the aforementioned fever is more prospects and we have those in spades. Or even bells*, one might say.

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Hello friends.

I always preach patience when it comes to slow starters, but once we get out of May it's officially time to start questioning if what we've seen so far is what we'll be getting for the rest of the season.

For those already rostering these slowpokes, it is a matter of deciding whether it's worth it to keep holding them and root for positive regression, or whether you should abandon all hope and try to ship them out for whatever loose change you can find. And if you don't have any early-season disappointments, it's about whether you should be bargain hunting and betting on the come, looking to acquire the early-round duds whose presence is currently infuriating one of your fellow managers.

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Hello friends.

At the end of April, we took a peek at one of my favorite subjects, honing in on team performances vs pitcher handedness splits, trying to identify the teams to start taking advantage of, and those we should maybe try to avoid.

TL;DR

Streaming against bad teams is usually obvious but what kind of pitchers different teams do poorly against isn't always so straightforward. Teams can be bad vs both hands or good vs both hands but sometimes there is a big gap between LHP/RHP results and that's the space where you can often find advantages. While your league-mates are simply avoiding good offenses and/or targeting bad ones, we can hone in with more specificity and leverage less obvious plays.

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With summer almost upon us and spring slipping away, so too do our excuses for why our players are under or overproducing what we expected when drafting them. Saying, "It's still just May" is perfectly sane but the deeper into summer you use the excuse of time, the more you're probably fooling yourself. Since (nearly) two months are now in the books, let's cleave this early part of the season into two and see what we can see.

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Fantasy baseball expert Nicklaus Gaut will be holding a live chat today at 11am central time, exclusively with Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers. Use the link below to ask a question in advance, participate in the live event, and read the transcript afterward.

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Bonjour les amis - that's French for "Hi!"

Welcome back to the whiff show. We're talking plate discipline again but this time we'll head over to the positive side of things after covering all those who've gotten down in dumps in last week's edition. So, strap on your power of positvity and let's talk some players who are currently driving their managers (both in real life and fantasy) far less nuts. Jeffers, Adells, and Frys - oh my!

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Hello friends.

With May halfway behind us and over a quarter of the games in the books, we finally have a decent enough chunk of data to start shaking out some of the wheat from the chaff, with sample sizes officially getting large enough that we can start drawing some conclusions about performance without having some "well-actually guy" on Twitter immediately start haranguing us about "too much noise, not enough signal, don't pay attention to anything...bah-hhhhhhh." We'll start our 2024 Statsapalooza on plate discipline, as many of the related numbers are ones that begin to stabilize quickly. But first, a quick word on that dirty word, stabilize.

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Every week, Nicklaus Gaut writes a fantasy baseball article for Trade Rumors Front Office.  Here's his latest...

Hello friends.

Well, we covered the American league bullpen situations last week so proper order dictates we slide on over to the National League for this week's musing. So let's run it back, checking on each team's closing situations as well as looking for notable backups, dark horses, and best options for those fishing for Holds.

But before we head over to the senior circuit, let's update a couple of situations that have seen movement since last we spoke.

Minnesota Twins Update

What we said then: "Duran should slide back into his closer role."

What actually happened: Duran immediately racked two Saves in his first two appearances but two Holds in his last two, with Cole Sands getting the Save in one, and Caleb Thielbar in the other.

Duran was brought in to face Tyler O'Neill, Wilyer Abreu, and Connor Wong with a two-run lead in the eighth on Saturday, and Sands cleaned up in the ninth. On Monday night, Griffin Jax pitched the seventh and allowed the tying run, with Duran out for the eighth to face Dylan Moore, Josh Rojas, and Julio Rodriguez after the Twins gave him a two-run lead in the top. Lefty Caleb Thielbar then came in to finish out the ninth.

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