So, Stephen Strasburg, aka the greatest pitching prospect of all time turned savior of the Washington Nationals, tore a ligament in his elbow and will now miss at least one full season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. You can act surprised, but why would you be? Throwing a fastball overhand at 100 mph is a violent, unnatural motion. It's why fantasy baseball sites, both this one and others, warn time and time and time again not to overspend on pitching.

It's why keeper-league managers who positioned themselves to own Strasburg now find themselves royally screwed. Unless you have him in a dynasty league, there's pretty much no way you can hold onto him. You can't waste a precious 2011 keeper spot on a player who, best-case scenario, will miss that entire season. Unfortunately, this allows someone else to draft him late next year, stash him in a DL spot all season, and then keep him for 2012 if his recovery is progressing as planned. It's not fair, but them's the breaks.

Strasburg's ligament tear also demonstrates why fans of a franchise can't pin their hopes and dreams on a single player, especially if that player is a pitcher who wreaks havoc on his arm and elbow each time he enters his windup. Tommy John surgery isn't the downer it once was, and Strasburg will likely return to the diamond with his abilities fully intact. But by then he'll be at least one year closer to signing a big contract with the Yankees, having burned off a significant portion of his Washington service time rehabbing his arm. Nats fans definitely have a right to be bummed. But what they shouldn't be is shocked.

It's probably safe to go ahead and cut Jacoby Ellsbury at this point. It's nearly a certitude that he's going to miss the rest of the season thanks to the most recent installment of Jacoby's endless broken ribs (which sounds like a new dish at Tony Roma's). But I will not do it. I will store him in one of my two DL spots for the rest of the season, so that many years in the future, when I look back at the 2010 season using Yahoo's "All Time" feature, I will see Jacoby's name there on my roster and remember how that glass-like lung cage of his screwed me good.

I want his name there for eternity to remind me that counting on one player to carry the stolen-base category for you can be a recipe for disaster. Sure, it may seem more strategically sound to turn that DL spot over to a possibly productive waiver-wire player soon to be activated, but at this point, it's not about strategy. It's about regret and repentance and never forgetting the sins of one's fantasy past.

I've come to understand that one of the worst feelings you can have playing fantasy baseball is the realization that you made a terrible, terrible roster decision with your weekly-lineup team ... and said realization comes just a single day into the new week. So it's not a disgusted-with-oneself feeling that you suffer for just 24 hours, but rather one that continues to pummel your insides for six more days.

I kept Jacoby Ellsbury on my bench this week in my weekly-lineup league. I pretty much had to. Dude was 0-for-16 since returning from his lengthy DL stint and clearly had not found his stroke yet. Word was he was about to get dropped down deep in the Sox batting order. No place for that in my lineup. What there is room for, however, are stolen bases ... of which ninth-hitting Ellsbury had four this afternoon, tieing a Boston team record. The pit in my stomach was already forming after the second one. By the fourth, there was little I could do but curse at the iPod Touch I was using to follow the game.

The four swiped bags alone would justify having started Ellsbury this week. Now I wait and see how much harder he's going to twist the knife.

That must be a contender for the most generic, boring headline of all time. Shame on me for not trying. Anyway ...

-- Lance Berkman (traded to the Yankees) -- Heading to New York won't magically turn him 27 years old again, but the ballpark's a good one to hit in and that lineup doesn't hurt anyone.

-- Roy Oswalt (traded to the Phillies) -- Yeah, he moves to a hitters' park, but he also might actually notch some wins now.

-- Ted Lilly (traded to the Dodgers) -- Another quality starter moving from a shitty team to a good one. Pitching for a successful team doesn't guarantee wins; luck still plays a major part. But targeting SPs who play for teams with a high winning percentage remains the best way to try and gain points in that category.

-- Jake Westbrook (traded to the Cardinals) -- See: Oswalt and Lilly. Also, it's always nice when your pitcher jump from the AL to the more hurler-friendly NL.

Yahoo fantasy baseball players won't have to worry about this until next year, but I've been tooling around with my 2010 Yahoo fantasy football league site today and the new design they've implemented for individual league message boards is terrible. The simplicity of the old design has been replaced by a busy graphics-based board that tries to combine messages, smack talk, commish notes, commish changes and something new called "team slogans" into one annoying mishmash. The way it's set up, messages are visible from the league home page (without having to click on a message header), however they're displayed in a tiny font that is dwarfed by a Yahoo-automated header that says, "Bob (team name here) posted to the message board." Well, no shit, Sherlock. That seems obvious by the fact that the message showed up. So why is it so important that you point it out in text that's bigger than the actual message?

Smack talk updates and team slogan changes are also topped by these auto-generated headers, and the whole thing is put inside a big white box that features your avatar or team logo on the left. If you post a four-word message or smack talk, there ends up being a lot of wasted white space. Yahoo does give you the option to sort by category, but if you do so, you need to once again scroll back down the page past your league standings (and past the commish note-specific box, which has nonsensically been moved above the message board, which also displays commish notes) to get to what you want to look at.

And while I'm ranting, do we really need the ability to post messages and smack talk and team slogans?! It reeks heavily of trying to draw new users with catchy but useless features. I'd rather see the whole system streamlined.

It's funny how long ago March seems by the time the end of July rolls around. All of our pre-draft predictions and prejudices have been replaced by something I call "roster panic," defined as the realization that your current lineup isn't good enough to finish in the money, no matter how close you may be. Suddenly, it's all about filling holes, and players you hated in March become guys who you'd kill a stranger to get onto your team.

For example, yesterday I traded Nick Swisher for Geovany Soto and Billy Butler. Yes, that's the same Geovany Soto I wrote this about in January. What can I say? Miguel Olivo is no longer cutting it, and Soto is obviously a huge upgrade at that position. I also recommended in March that you avoid drafting Butler, as I believed last season represented his plateau rather than a sign of bigger things to come. Truth be told, I was pretty much right. His AVG, RBI and runs scored are up ever so slightly, but his current home-run total (only nine) is a huge disappointment. But as a DH replacement for Swisher when I'm also getting Soto? Hells yeah. Send him my way.

Being within shouting distance of a money finish as the trade deadline approaches can do funny things to the brain, not least of which is making you forget or ignore all of the things you were sure about this past spring. When you write for a fantasy baseball blog, you also run the danger of looking like a hypocrite. But none of that matters. Winning is way more important than being afraid to admit you were wrong.

So Pittsburgh rookie Pedro Alvarez now has four home runs over his last two games and four multi-hit games out of his last five. And these aren't chincy home runs he's hitting. I was at the game yesterday and saw two of them in person. These are "oh my god he just vaporized the baseball"-style dingers.

Now I just need to figure out what makes me happier, the realization that it's a member of my beloved yet beleaguered Pirates showing this kind of offensive prowess or the fact that I actually traded John Axford for Alvarez mere days before the power explosion began. I must say, after rostering and starting Gordon Beckham, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Lopez, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Felipe Lopez this season, it's finally nice to own a productive third baseman I don't have to spend time worrying about. Oh, and if you're in a shallow league, you might get lucky and find he's currently a free agent.

It’s mid-July.

Your ratios are toast because you drafted Josh Beckett, John Lackey, Jake Peavy and Scott Baker. You have one option left when it comes to pitching. Forget about WHIP and ERA and try to come in first in Ks and WHIP. You have to start streaming. I've been forced to stream in one of my leagues, and I've developed a few helpful rules and tips to aid you in your search for the perfect streamer. My name is Matt. I'm with FH and I am here to help.

1. Avoid rookie pitchers. I can’t stress this enough. I want no part of the warm bodies the Pirates and Royals will be calling up to make his major league debut in August. You’ll say, “His minor league numbers were amazing.” I’ll respond, “Yeah, but he was playing in a league that couldn’t afford outfield fences and all of his outfielders were 6’18 and catch balls with their teeth.” If you want to stream, you’re already dealing with guys that are risky. Don’t screw up your WHIP and ERA further while not getting wins and Ks because a rookie starter only stuck around for two innings. Veterans are boring and predictable. I'd rather take a typical Dave Bush start against Pittsburgh than take a risk on some guy who had spent four months making guys look foolish in Toledo.

So, I must join the chorus of apologies here at Fantasy Hurler, as I intended to write more Chin Music than I have contributed so far. However, a daughter in preschool who needs attention (seriously, that was NOT in the pamphlet I received) and a relatively new job I am attempting to master gives me much less time than I had just a year ago. I can't promise very much regular content going forward, but I wanted to get a few things off my chest as we pause for the All-Star break.

-- Overall, I enjoyed a decent first half in fantasy baseball this year. Of the three teams I am managing this year, my team in the Hurler league is faring the worst. The Sofa Kings are tied for fifth place in the 12-team league, 19.5 points out of first place. I am completely convinced that this is due to the engagement level of the league's owners. It seems like every time I look for a player to pick up, he has been rostered already for a week or more, sometimes longer. This is a testament to the owners in the league, to whom I must tip my hat at this point. There is a lot of baseball left to be played, but getting into the top tier of this league will be a welcome challenge. Kudos to the owners of Ballin' in the Bay (Eric) and the Lucky Strikes (Glenn), as they have set themselves apart from the rest of the pack. Good luck to everyone else in the league as we all try to claw to respectability.

This is going to sound like I'm lying, but I assure you, I'm not. I looked it up today. After a slow start, Prince Fielder has now hit 20 home runs this season. Of those 20, 16 have been with the bases empty. SIXTEEN. That seems statistically impossible. It certainly explains why he's driven in only 39 base runners this year. It also throws a bright shining light on why my money-team lags so far behind in RBI this year. To say that he's a little off the pace of the 141 he drove in last year is a gross understatement.