Today's Fantasy Rx.

I hope everyone has a good grasp of our valuation methods and methodology between the last three days of articles and the first four days of this column back in November. Now I can move on to putting all the player reviews in perspective.

Between November 19th and February 6th, I reviewed somewhere around 2350 players. About 60 of these were reviewed twice, once each with both their AL and NL stats. I wanted to do two reviews for each of the mid-season league switchers because of the number of fantasy leagues that don't allow you to keep players traded to the other league. However in retrospect, full-season reviews of each player would have been more appropriate, and I would also have to be less creative for players like Donnie Sadler, for whom 100 words is more than someone with his abilities deserves.

Several prospects were also reviewed both in the Rule Five draft analysis and with their team. I believe Ryan Christenson actually had three separate sections, with commentary on his time with Oakland, Arizona, and now his selection by the Brewers in the second round of the major league Rule 5 draft. Instead of trying to analyze a borderline fifth outfielder three different times, I should have dedicated more effort to expanding some of my minor league commentary.

In the minor league articles, another 1168 players received reviews. Of these players, 516 were minor league free agents, and the remaining 652 were players with either AAA or AA time who I felt appeared to either deserve or likely find major league playing time by the end of 2002. Not all of these were prospects in any sense; injured former major leaguers like Francisco Cordova and Garrett Stephenson were included here because they received minor league time in 2001 without returning to the majors.

I considered running some analysis of team's minor league systems based upon the ratio of minor league free agents to "prospects", but this information only seems relevant at a glance. Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh each lost a dozen minor league free agent pitchers, signifying the weakness in quality pitching depth inherent in each of their systems. However, the Yankees lost 22 MLFA pitchers, and they still have some of the best pitching prospects in baseball, both in quality and quantity. Similarly, strong organizations like Oakland, Seattle, and Texas each lost six MLFA pitchers, but so did St. Louis and Baltimore, and both those teams are deservedly ranked near the bottom of all minor league systems.

Returning to major leaguers, we saw 345 position players earn Positive Draft Value, nine more than the expected 336 (12 teams * 14 positions * 2 leagues), a discrepancy attributable to the replacement value of $1 players, where each player earns almost exactly as much as the player before and after him. In addition to the draftable players, 299 players earned $0 or less PDV, and over half of those actually posted positive Category Dollars, meaning that they were usable as injury replacements without hurting your team.

On the pitching side, 232 pitchers earned Positive Draft Value, sixteen above the expected 216 (12 teams * 9 pitchers * 2 leagues). The increase in PDV pitchers shows that even less difference exists between minimum salary pitchers and hitters. Another 383 posted PDV of $0 or less, indicating how quickly major league teams are willing to cycle through pitchers, only allowing many one or two bad outings, and awarding plenty of September innings to prospects who probably should rest their arms.

The minimum goal of any rotisserie team should be to turn a profit on every player owned. Combined with the philosophy of spreading the risk among all your players, an optimal team should have 14 offensive players at $12 each and 9 pitchers at $10 a piece, with the two outstanding dollars allocated to any player or two. You should expect each player to earn at least one dollar more than his draft price. A $1 profit on each player leaves you with an Actual Team Value of $283, certainly an amount able to insure a finish in the money in almost every single rotisserie league.

When analyzing after-season player reviews, you must focus on positions where value is either extremely difficult to acquire or readily available at a discount for ideas in planning next year's draft strategy.

Looking at positional scarcity, only five American League catchers earned double-digit Draft Value, and only three catchers managed the same in the National League. The last two double-digit AL catchers, Rob Fick and Shawn Wooten, are also much more likely to see the majority of their playing time in 2002 at other positions.

Your primary strategy at very scarce positions like catcher should be to acquire the first available players who you can reasonably expect to earn a couple dollars of profit. If you spend at least a few dollars of salary on each, you can likely grab between $15-20 of combined value in two slots where some of your competitors will only see a couple dollars at best.

The first trade we completed this off-season in each of our two AL keepers leagues was to acquire a catcher at or slightly under his current projected value: a $9 Shawn Wooten in a 4x4 standard, and a $4 Meluskey in a 5x5, 10-team league. We added these players to teams in which we expect to keep a $10 Pierzynski and $5 Hall respectively, so while the latter team can expect to see significantly more profit, our $19 in the first league should guarantee us at least $15 of value. At this time, we only expect IRod, Posada, and maybe Rob Fick, Ramon Hernandez, Ben Davis, Ben Molina, and Jason Varitek to perform at or above these players, and that's assuming that each of them finds 400 AB between crowded lineups and recovery from injuries. So we've acquired two of the eleven top catchers in the AL, giving us an advantage over the teams stuck, respectively, with any of the remaining thirteen or nine available catchers.

Some owners reading this likely prefer to either take their chances with $1 catchers while hoping for another LoDuca surprise, or simply shell out the money for Posada and IRod, or Piazza and Kendall. Considering the recent injury troubles of all four of the premiere catchers, we believe that he safer strategy is to focus on the $5-$10 range of above-average catchers in attempt to find a small profit at a frequently-ignored position.

We'll head around the horn tomorrow as we examine the 2001 reviews with respect to the value and scarcity extant in infielders.

Today's Fantasy Rx: I'm going to review this year's fantasy mags in a few days. So far, we've bought The Sporting News Fantasy Baseball Owners Manual, Rotowire Fantasy Baseball Guide, Fantasy Sports, and Lindy's Fantasy Baseball. Have any other recently issued 2002 fantasy baseball magazines slipped our notice? Are there any of these magazines that you believe deserve specific praise? Please send me your comments, and hopefully I can provide some advice on where to spend your money this week.