Speedster Billy Hamilton is learning it's hard to steal bases if you can't get on base. (Getty Images)

At the end of every month this season, Yahoo! Sports will solicit the opinions of 20 general managers, executives and scouts to compile the Prospect Heat Check, a look across the minor leagues at who's hot, who's not, who you're likely to soon see in the big leagues and who may be trade bait.

Whether it's for deep fantasy leagues or to sound smarter than the average fan, here are the need-to-know names of the moment.

CONFLAGRANT

Miguel Sano, 3B, high Class A, Minnesota Twins
Byron Buxton, CF, low Class A, Minnesota Twins

Nobody had a better month on the farm than the Twins, who saw Sano and Buxton translate two of the best raw toolsets in the minor leagues into matching production.

[Also: Colorado's Wilin Rosario got his game from Manny Ramirez]

"Miguel Sano is absolutely exploding," said one AL evaluator, a sentiment echoed by Twins brass. Not only does he look better at third base – the thinking goes if Miguel Cabrera and Pablo Sandoval can play there, so can the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Sano,

The Phanatic isn't the only one crazy about the Phillies. Philly's team could land a $5B TV deal. (USA Today Sports)

An aphorism for modern baseball times, from the noted poet Scott Boras:

"These days, a franchise's No. 4 hitter is no longer in uniform. The No. 4 hitter is the guy who negotiates the contract for the TV rights."

Boras, agent by title and provocateur by nature, is not selling anyone or anything when he utters these words. Baseball's more than seven-fold growth over the last 21 years – from a $1.2 billion business to an $8.5 billion behemoth – first came on the backs of taxpayers with municipality-backed sweetheart stadium deals and today balloons thanks to consumers' monthly television bills.

Given the choice of a cleanup hitter and cleaning up via beaucoup local TV bucks, there is no question every franchise in baseball would take the latter – mainly because it can afford them the former. A bad TV deal isn't apocalyptic for a franchise's prospects. It's just cloudy with a chance of perpetual drudgery.

Some of it is luck, in the cases of the teams whose contracts have expired since

Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria personally mandated the lineup card change that flip-flopped starting pitchers Jose Fernandez and Ricky Nolasco in a doubleheader Tuesday and left Marlins players furious with his continued meddling, three sources with knowledge of the situation told Yahoo! Sports.

Owner Jeffrey Loria makes yet another bad decision for the Marlins. (Getty Images)Loria insisted Fernandez, the team's prized 20-year-old rookie, pitch in the first half of the doubleheader at frigid Target Field instead of the scheduled Nolasco because the day game was expected to be warmer. The temperature at Fernandez's first pitch (38 degrees) was actually colder than at the beginning of Nolasco's start (42 degrees).

Rookie manager Mike Redmond delivered the news to Nolasco about 2½ hours before the first game against the Minnesota Twins, and it did not go over well with him or his teammates. Standard protocol for doubleheaders is that veterans choose which game they want to pitch. Not only did Loria ignore that and further alienate Nolasco, the Marlins' highest-paid

The age of austerity doesn't look like it'll last long for the Yankees. (USA Today Sports)

All along, the New York Yankees have stated the effort to cut their 2014 payroll to $189 million is merely a goal. More and more, it's one major league sources don't believe they'll reach.

In recent months, the Yankees have become far less bullish on their publicly stated austerity plan, admitting to other executives and agents that staying beneath the $189 million threshold is unlikely and impractical.

"They're going to be over 189," one source familiar with the Yankees' plans said. "They know it. Everyone knows it. You can't run a $3 billion team with the intentions of saving a few million dollars."

The logic holds up well: The Yankees are arguably the greatest brand in American sports, and already with an injury-depleted roster this season, they could suffer a down year. To dilute the Yankee name for multiple years would necessitate a humongous monetary benefit – one sources say the Yankees no longer believe is coming to them, even if they were to dip beneath $189 million. Derek Jeter has a player option for $8 million next season with the Yankees. (AP)

While the

Ron Gardenhire has guided the Twins to six playoff appearances since 2002. (AP)

If dogs are the most loyal creatures on the planet, the Minnesota Twins are a close second. Since 1986, three general managers and two managers have steered the Twins. No other baseball team comes close to such little turnover. As modern sports' levels of patience devolved, something very interesting happened: The Twins rebelled against it.

This is, on one hand, a testament to so many of the qualities long held dear both in baseball and outside: stability, familiarity, continuity, fidelity. Those, too, happen to be petri dishes for inefficiency, atrophy and, ultimately, obsolescence. Such is the dichotomy the Twins face this season as a decision on longtime manager Ron Gardenhire's future looms amid a two-year stretch in which the Twins suffered through the second- and fourth-worst seasons in Minnesota.

The likelihood of Gardenhire, whose contract expires at season's end, leaving Minnesota anytime soon is small, particularly considering the abundance of young talent coming

A drop in velocity this year hasn't harmed Justin Verlander's reputation as one of MLB's top pitchers. (AP)

The scouts notice. Because it's April, and because his statistics are just fine, and especially because this is Justin Verlander they're talking about, they don't think all that much of it yet. That doesn't keep them from asking one another the same thing: Are you getting what I'm getting?

Four starts into the season, Verlander's fastball is AWOL. And the answer to their question is yes: Their radar-gun readings are not lying. The best fastball in baseball has simply been good.

"I've had him 91-93," said one AL scout who has seen two of Verlander's starts.

"He's been 90-94, topped out at 96," confirmed an NL scout.

PITCHf/x data captured around the major league parks verifies their readings. The data can be interpreted a number of ways. Baseball Info Solutions, which provides statistics for FanGraphs, says Verlander's average fastball this year is 91.9 mph. Brooks Baseball, which uses PITCHf/x for its proprietary data that usually is about a half-mile-per-hour

The San Diego Padres president and CEO said Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke intentionally threw at Carlos Quentin and that he should not have lowered his shoulder when Quentin charged the mound, precipitating a brawl last week that left Greinke with a broken collarbone that will sideline him for two months.

In a 4-minute, 29-second clip of a recent talk with Padres season-ticket holders obtained by Yahoo! Sports, Tom Garfinkel outlined the festering history between Greinke and Quentin and concluded the fastball that hit Quentin's arm was deliberate despite Greinke's claims otherwise.

"He threw at him on purpose, OK?" Garfinkel told an estimated crowd of 40 or 50 at Petco Park on Friday, a day after the fight. "That's what happened. They can say 3-and-2 count, 2-1 game, no one does that. Zack Greinke is a different kind of guy. Anyone seen 'Rain Man'? He's a very smart guy."

Garfinkel went on to reference Greinke's social-anxiety disorder, a comment he told Yahoo!

Another baseball player allegedly drove drunk Tuesday. This wasn't just dawdling near the legally acceptable line of intoxication. This was full-blown, God's own drunk, nearly three times the legal limit, the sort of drunk a man can get when the consequences in his state are laughable and those at his workplace nonexistent.

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Yovani Gallardo will pay the government $778 in fines, or .0001 of his salary this season, for filling himself so full of beer that he blew a 0.22 blood-alcohol level and proceeded to swerve his heavy-duty Ford F-150 in and out of lanes, according to a police report. He could also face a nominal charge from the Brewers for breaking curfew. His penalties will end there. Brewers pitcher Yovani Gallardo faces a DUI charge after getting arrested on Tuesday morning. (AP)

And, once again, Major League Baseball will look like it doesn't care about drunk driving. It does. It has to. There is no good argument for driving drunk. None. Ever. Player after player getting arrested for DUI does nothing but reflect poorly on the sport. Gallardo is