As the calendar turns to May, differentiating extended slumps from skill deterioration becomes an integral part of fantasy baseball.

In daily fantasy, price tags often move with performance. Players off to difficult starts will see their prices decline steadily and public interest wane as frustration mounts.

This creates a unique combination of value in both projection and ownership if you can identify those players most likely to rebound.

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One method to identify hitters likely to rebound is to look beyond their base statistics. Low batting averages can be the product of too many strikeouts, lots of weak contact, or both. They can also be the result of poor luck.

The first place to investigate extended slumps for hitters is looking at their ”BABIP,” which stands for Batting Average On Balls In Play. Typically around 30 percent of balls in play fall for hits. Players who deviate substantially from a range of .280-.320 on balls in play are likely to move t..

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) Webb Simpson popped the cork on a champagne bottle to celebrate his victory in The Players Championship.

Though not by design, the moment also could have signaled the close of an era.

The Players Championship, which has all the trappings of a major except public recognition as one, ended its 12-year run being played in May. Simpson set or tied four records, one of which drained the former swamp of drama the TPC Sawgrass can deliver in any month.

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He had a seven-shot lead going into the last day, the largest in the tournament’s 45-year history. No one got closer than four shots Sunday. The only other time that happened at The Players was in 1994 when Greg Norman didn’t make a bogey until the 13th hole of the final round and set the scoring record at 24-under 264.

The idea behind moving to May was to give golf a big event every month starting with the Masters in April, to have better weather and more daylight, and to present a ..

National Golf Foundation sees signs of encouragement in latest annual Golf Industry Report, which show modest gains in the overall number of golfers

Maddie MeyerEarlier this season, immediately following the NBA All-Star break, I made a well-informed declaration that LeBron James and the Cavs were the lock of the century as a 5.5-point favorite against the Washington Wizards. The statistics backed it up, and it was a trend that couldn't be ignored. Naturally, the Cavs lost by seven at home, causing me to look like the idiot I am and receive well-deserved jabs on twitter despite a follower count under 300.
Rather than learn from my mistakes, I'm deciding to go down this road once again, because the statistics, and my memory tell me that there is not a chance in hell LeBron is losing in Boston on Tuesday night after that awful showing in game one on Sunday. First, a look at James' numbers following a loss in the postseason courtesy of extremely underrated ESPN play-by-play man Adam Amin:
https://twitter.com/adamamin/status/996401240367075330
I'm not going to get hung up on James' statistics in these games, be..

This week's cover of The New Yorker, our corporate cousin a few floors up, features Donald Trump playing golf in a swamp, which appears to say something about the 45th president's time management, if not his driving accuracy. But that was just our initial take, so we reached out to John Cuneo, the cover artist and a regular contributor to Golf Digest, to discuss the genesis of the cover, and what he's learned drawing both Trump and golf—not always at the same time.
So what was the inspiration for the cover?
Unlike most editorial assignments, New Yorker covers are pitched, not assigned. So artists are left to follow instincts and respond to current events. Here I was trying to combine a couple of elements that are associated with the president and make a visual statement that incorporates a point of view with some humor. One tries to avoid being pedantic with this stuff as nothing can kill a joke quicker than somber outrage.
What does your illustration say about the presi..

Welcome to another edition of The Grind, where we wound up catching a break by not going to the Players for the first time in eight years. Not that the tournament wasn’t exciting — although Webb Simpson did his best to make it a snoozefest over the weekend — but it kept me from going to Chili’s. And as difficult as it was to see THE STREAK of eating at my favorite Ponte Vedra Beach spot come to an end temporarily halted, at least I’m not affected by the chain’s credit card breach announcement on Monday. No food is worth that kind of financial stress. Well, maybe the cajun chicken pasta. Damn, that's good. . . Anyway, I do feel slightly guilty, though, for convincing/coercing/forcing colleague Chris Powers to go there in my place.
https://twitter.com/CPowers14/status/994750379681288192
Better check your bank statements, Chris. And in the meantime, let’s check on everything else that happened at TPC Sawgrass and beyond during a wild week.
WE'RE BUYING
Webb Simpson: It’s tough t..

No band in the history of recorded music is screams “SPORTS F—K YEAH” quite like Queen. AC/DC, The White Stripes, and even Neil Diamond deserve their respective nods, but no one—not even the Penny Farthing enthusiasts behind “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”—can lay claim to stadium standards like “We Will Rock You”, “We Are The Champions”, and, umm, “Ogre Fight” (which we're still waiting to break onto UFC playlists across America). Thus it's with ample pyrotechnics and the starting lineups blaring over the PA that we introduce you to Bohemian Rhapsody, the upcoming, Rami Malek-led Freddie Mercury biopic which unveiled its first trailer on Tuesday. DUN, DUN, PSH, DUN, DUN, PSH.
Initial takeaways? Malek, despite looking distractingly like Steven Tyler, seems like a solid choice for the embattled production, which lost both Sacha Baron Cohen and former X-Men director Bryan Singer this fall. While the prospect of watching Borat tackle “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” was certainly ..

Here's a round-up of the pink styles we liked from the Players Championship and how to replicate them

A scorecard error lead to the disqualification of 12 high school golfers in Oregon's state high school golf tournament.

Breaking down the top 20 on the Official World Golf Ranking reveals an interesting trend in how the game's best golfers earn their rankings points