Off to his usual slow start to the season, the Pirates' first baseman Adam LaRoche's hitting will likely heat up if his past four seasons are any indication.

Cliff Welch/Icon SMI

Every Thursday from now until September, you can come here to find an in-depth look at fantasy baseball's sell-high and buy-low candidates ...

Buy Low

Adam LaRoche, 1B, Pirates: There are a few things you can count on every April: that last bit of snow will melt away, the Vidalia Onion Festival's Sweet Onion Country Jam will be just a terrific time for the whole family, and Adam LaRoche will be an atrocious hitter.

Newbie LaRoche owners everywhere are likely despondent over his April line: .174, six runs, one homer, five RBIs. But this is typical LaRoche. Take a look at his season-by-season April lines, then immediately wash your eyes out:

2007: .133, eight runs, three HR, 11 RBIs.
2006: .200, 10 runs, four homers, 12 RBIs.
2005: .206, seven runs, two homers, 10 RBIs.
2004: .214, eight runs, one homer, eight RBIs.

Coming into this season, LaRoche carried a career .184 April batting average into this season, as compared to a .289 post-April mark. And the 28-year old still carries 30-homer potential. Clearly, better days are ahead.

Nick Johnson, 1B, Nationals: You might remember Johnson as the svelte, lantern-jawed fellow who hit .290 with 100 runs and 23 homers in '06. Then came the near-biblical broken leg that refused to heal, costing him all of '07. And now, Johnson is a doughy shell of a man hitting a mere .222 and doing it for a really crappy team.

But considering that his last regular season at-bat came on the same day Toomas Hendrik Ilves was elected president of Estonia ... What's that? Nothing? It was a little more than a week before Per Westerberg took office as Speaker of the Riksda in Sweden. Still? Really? Well, it was Sept. 23, 2006, and that's a long time between at-bats. He should be a little rusty. Factor in a slightly inordinate amount of plate appearances versus lefties so far this season, and the .222 average is quite understandable.

But Johnson is still showing his trademark patience at the plate, and more important for fantasy owners, he's showing a good amount of power: four homers and seven doubles already. He has a .457 slugging percentage despite just seven singles on the season. If he can get that strikeout rate just a little more in check (20 Ks in 91 at-bats this season), a probability once he settles back in, Johnson's average will inch back towards the .290s. Since he gets on base more than 40 percent of the time, the runs come. And assuming the power keeps coming, Johnson becomes a very solid four-category player over the rest of '08.

Sell High

Ryan Dempster, SP, Cubs: You kids should know better by now, but there are plenty of owners gripping tight to Dempster's shiny 4-0 record and solid 3.16 ERA. As is our custom here at BL/SH, it's time to bludgeon the hope out of those owners.

The one positive is that Dempster is inducing groundballs at better than a 2-to-1 ratio, a key to overcoming Wrigley Field sans top shelf stuff. But his opponents' BABIP sits at an impossible-to-maintain .192, and Dempster is carrying a pedestrian-at-best 22-to-19 K-to-BB ratio over his 37 innings. Essentially, the numbers show a pitcher who hasn't overpowered hitters, hasn't shown good control, and has gotten pretty freaking lucky when the ball has gotten into play.

And keep in mind that in what amounts to about five full seasons as a starter, Dempster only maintained any kind of success once. (That was in '00, when he struck out 209 hitters in 226.1 innings.) His groundball tendencies and good run support give him a little bit of hope. But with those kinds of peripherals, Dempster will have to become a religious man if he's going to finish '08 with better than a Jake Westbrook-type of line.