Today's Fantasy Rx

The LABR reviews will be delayed as we have two drafts this weekend and don't have time to give sufficient analysis to the picks. Unfortunately, the official LABR site does not list the reserve picks, although I certainly appreciate the e-mails we received containing those links. John Zaleski was kind enough to send us the vast majority of the reserve AL picks, but we're still missing all of the NL list.

We were invited to two "experts" leagues this year, although neither of them is yet as prestigious as LABR or Tout Wars. Both leagues draft this weekend, and about the only features they have in common are they're both NL-only.

As we'll be posting links to both sites on our home page so you can monitor our progress throughout the year, we thought we should probably provide some background on both leagues. We'll probably spend a couple days reviewing our drafts next week so you can evaluate our teams for yourself. FSRU.com invited us to the inaugural season of The Fantasy Sports Invitational Challenge. Among the other owners are representatives from The Sporting News, Rotoworld, Rototimes, and Sandlot Shrink.

FSRU is running both AL5x5 and NL5x5 leagues, and we're participating in the latter this year. It's a straight snake draft in a chat room to fill 23-man rosters and four reserve slots. There are no AB/IP maximum or minimums, we can pick up one free agent a week in reverse order of the previous week's standings, and we have weekly lineup moves.

The lack of AB/IP max/mins provides for a wealth of additional strategy options not available in most leagues, so we're certainly expecting some unconventional strategies. We're at a slight disadvantage as we were randomly assigned the 8th slot in the first round, so we'll need to focus on building a deep roster instead of building around a particular player.

FSRU posted an article a few days ago listing the Top 25 players in NL-only leagues as listed by five of the owners in FSIC, including Fantasy Insights' Seth Trachtman and FSRU's Al O'Harra who both draft in the NL league with us. While there was definitely no agreement on the specific rank of any player, certainly players topped everyone's lists.

We'll provide a quick breakdown of the players listed in the Top 5 by at least one owner. Todd Helton was listed 1st three times, 2nd once, and 3rd once. Vlad held the average second position with a 1st, 2nd, two 3rds, and a 4th. Sammy was third with two 2nds, a 3rd, and two 6ths. Randy held a solid 4th with a 1st, 3 4ths, and a #13. Piazza finished a little ahead of Alomar with two 5ths, a 6th, an 8th, and a 9th. Shawn Green and Chipper Jones followed Alomar, probably followed by Schilling, who was listed 2nd by one owner but didn't even make the top 25 for two others.

One player not listed in anyone's top 5 still should wind up 7th overall or so as Barry Bonds received a #6, three 7ths, and a #12, placing him just behind Roberto Alomar.

The composite rankings actually list Bagwell and Abreu behind Shawn Green at #8, and then after Chipper at #11, Luis Gonzalez and Albert Pujols finish ahead of Schilling at #14.

ESPN's average draft ranking for NL-only league, a fairly decent list for comparison purposes, lists the Top 10 as Randy, Sosa, Helton, Vlad, Piazza, Chipper, Bonds, Schilling, Alomar, and Green.

So we figure we have no chance at Helton, Vlad, Sammy or Randy. Seth Trachtman ranked Schilling second on his list behind only Randy and he picks third, so if either Rototimes' Matt Wilson or Insider Baseball's Steve Bell takes Randy, Schilling will go third overall. Al O'Harra picks 7th, right before us, and he ranked Shawn Green fifth overall behind only the top 4.

As long as Randy goes 1st or 2nd, a reasonable expectation considering his potential dominance in 5x5, we can reasonably project six of the top seven picks to include Vlad, Helton, Sammy, Randy, Schilling, and Green. We'll be left with a first round pick of either Alomar, Piazza, Chipper, or Bonds, or we could go in a completely different direction, perhaps trying to force an early run on relievers.

For our Sunday draft, we were invited to join the Fantasy Baseball Review Challenge. FBRC is only running an NL league this year, but FBRNLC differs in so many ways from FSIC that our preparation for tomorrow barely applies to the draft on Sunday.

FBRNLC begins with an auction via phone. We draft 24 players, including two utilitymen, along with 12 reserve rounds. Few prospects will likely be drafted as we only have eight owners this year, so we'll be able to draft 280 (8 owners * 35 players) of the 400 National League players, a 70% proportion, somewhat below the normal recommended "book" percentage.

The league's also H2H, so we'll need to win a majority of our 19 weekly regular season games to qualify as one of the four playoff teams. Finally, we're using a points' formula instead of rotisserie scoring, and the system places special emphasis on hitters with high OPS and starting pitchers. The actual breakdown is rather more complicated and includes bonuses even for holds and shutouts, but there's little need for me to list it at the moment.

Finally, FBRNLC is also designed as a keeper league, so we'll be able to keep a section of our roster for the next few years as we compete against the same owners, while hopefully adding additional challengers to bring the total owners up to 12 or more.

We'll likely barely consider the keeper aspects of the league as we want to win this year to prove our mettle against more established "experts". We're at somewhat of a disadvantage here as we have little experience with H2H leagues and even less with points, so we're also looking at this as a learning experience.

I hope this gives you a good idea of what our weekend looks like. I'll likely try to assemble the AL LABR review for the next two days, spend the beginning of next week reviewing our weekend drafts, and then continue with the NL LABR review once the Baseball Weekly Fantasy Special debuts on Wednesday with the complete rosters.

Today's Fantasy Rx: Since we're rather new to both H2H and points, we'd be happy to listen to advice from our readers. We have a good idea of both how to value players for the draft and how to win, but if there are any specific strategies that any of you use, we'd be happy to both read them and potentially discuss them in next week's articles. Feel free to send any ideas about our Sunday league over to us.