It's easy to fall in love with strong half seasons. It's also easy to read too much into them. After all, the midpoint of the season is an arbitrary cutoff, and there are bound to be performance swings between any few months of data. That said, many starting pitchers who surge down the stretch often are better speculations than others. Let's take a look at the SP whose BPV increased the most between the first and second halves of 2011:

Friday the 13th. Perfect for discussing the frightening Orioles, White Sox, Twins, A's, Reds and Astros bullpens.

Last month, the Batting Buyers Guide examined hitters who had very poor seasons in 2011, looking at which of them might be most likely to “regress to the mean” of their weighted average performance from 2008-10. As with last time, we started by finding the batters whose 2011 seasons varied sharply from their norms, this time by doing far better than their norms suggested.

You won't be able to earn a profit on these starting pitchers on draft day.

This column is a quick peek into the Baseball Forecaster's LIMA ratings of relievers for 2012.

In this edition of the Batting Buyers Guide, we’ll look at players who had unusually poor seasons, and assess their capacity to “bounce back” to useful productivity levels; the next edition, in early January, will identify and assess some of 2011’s overperformers.

Here are several guys who have the upside and skills to become rotation anchors this season...

Completing the look ahead to 2012, this week the column tackles the western divisions.

With about 10 games left in the regular season, it's time for us to declare our 2011 Fantasy Baseball All-Star batters.

Let's take one final look at in-season buying opportunities when it comes to starting pitchers. Here are the SP who have posted elite skills over the last month...