MLB

Tampa Bay Rays catcher Rene Rivera will have a hard time living this slide down.

This year's Major League Baseball draft doesn't feature a generational talent at the top, nor does it have the depth of a class like 2011, but that does add to the drama, because anything can happen starting with the first pick. 

Arizona owns the No. 1 overall pick for the first time since 2005. That year produced Justin Upton, who turned out to be a very good big leaguer in his time with the Diamondbacks, before being traded to Atlanta and subsequently San Diego. 

The 2015 MLB All-Star Game is rapidly approaching, and a handful of surprising players are worthy of an All-Star nod. 

Over the next few slides, we'll touch on some of the unsung heroes of the 2015 season. The following players deserve to be recognized at the Midsummer Classic, despite coming out of nowhere to earn such praise.

If you were concerned that baseball's rumor mill hadn't been spitting out much in regard to some of the biggest names in the game recently, what's transpired in recent days should be enough to put your mind at ease.

A deep list of top pitching options gives daily fantasy baseball competitors plenty of choices for Tuesday's contests. If you don't want to spend all of your budget on the true superstars on the mound, you can find worthwhile replacements on the next tier.

You can succeed with a variety of strategies in a full slate of action for June 2.

Pitchers to Draft

Chris Archer, Tampa Bay Rays ($8,900)

1. Mets Vie for the Sixth Man Award

The idea, Mets manager Terry Collins estimates, came out of six or more hours of discussion over several days between him and pitching coach Dan Warthen. This was probably three weeks ago, when they saw what Noah Syndergaard was doing, looked at the schedule, noted that Dillon Gee was due back soon and knew they needed a plan to protect youngsters Syndergaard, Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom from too much work.

Obviously, you're not surprised to see "Mike Trout" and "most valuable" in the same sentence. Trout was the runner-up in the American League MVP voting in 2012 and 2013 before winning the award in 2014. His name and "most valuable" have appeared together a lot over the last three years.

And yet all that now looks like little more than a prolonged warm-up for what Trout is doing in 2015.

Not everyone gets the Bryce Harper treatment.

While the Washington Nationals' right fielder has been generating all sorts of much-deserved buzz, there's also a slew of MLB players like Brian Dozier and Michael Wacha who have quietly carried their teams into postseason contention.

In the list that follows, there's room for one masher who's making a dark-horse run for MVP honors and a few starters who are making lots of noise in the Cy Young Award chases.

UPDATE: Yasmani Grandal and Andre Ethier will not be playing in the early LA vs COL game.  I will replace them in my lineup with Mike McKenry ($2800) and Alex Guerrero ($3300).  We can't let the thin air go to waste!

After our 51.75-point explosion on June 1, we will continue to ride the Mets' pitching and the Dodgers' hitting.  Keep in mind that we will be relying heavily on the game at Coors Field (LA vs COL), which is slated for 3:10 p.m. EDT.  The second game between these two teams (8:40 p.m. EDT) will not count for FanDuel points.

For much of the day on Monday, the New York Mets story du jour was the three-year anniversary of Johan Santana's 2012 no-hitter. That is to say, the flavor of the day was that of bittersweet nostalgia.

But then Jacob deGrom took the mound and seized the spotlight for himself.