Today's Fantasy Rx

Our last AL draft of the year was the Wednesday after Opening Day. We're entering our second year of participation in an AL 5x5, 10-team draft. We and one other team draft over the net while everyone else drafts at a restaurant in California.

One of the great aspects of this league is the unlimited minor league system. We needed to rebuild last season (along with a couple of other teams), and we wound up acquiring a fairly balanced group of minor leaguers that should help us in waves over the next few years. After I cover the auction, I'll review our minor league draft.

A couple of owners in this league go into the draft almost every year with an eye on rebuilding, so several great keepers severely increase inflation. For example, Alex Rodriguez was kept at $57, and if we hadn't kept Jeter at a very reasonable $35, we would have bid at least $55 on him per our inflation-adjusted Draft Values.

Keeper Roster for Statistical Anomaly

C	5	Toby Hall
C	4	Mitch Meluskey
1B	17	Steve Cox
3B	
CR	5	Doug Mientkiewicz
2B	5	Luis Rivas
SS	35	Derek Jeter
MF	5	Mike Young
OF	19	Mike Cameron
OF	10	Carlos Lee
OF	
OF	
OF
UT

SP	19	Andy Pettitte
SP	5	Joel Pineiro
SP	1	Joe Mays
SP
P
P
P
RP	1	Kelvim Escobar
CL	10	Jeff Zimmerman

We knew going into the draft that we had problems in saves considering Zimmerman's injury and the Jays' early schedule, but we were also determined not to spend much on relievers as our two closers should help us finish in at least the middle of the pack.

Our goal was to grab a couple decent starting pitchers, outfielders, and then a solid third basemen from the available Corey Koskie, Jeff Cirillo, Dmitri Young, Troy Glaus, and Eric Hinske. We felt fairly confident in our steals with Rivas, Jeter, and Cameron, so we were mainly looking to add solid middle-of-the-order hitters that wouldn't hurt us in BA.

The first three tosses were Trot Nixon, Ivan Rodriguez, and Freddy Garcia. We let Nixon go at $25 since we were worried about his lineup slot; considering he seems to be mostly bouncing between #6 and #8, our decision was certainly at least defendible. Thanks to picking up Hall and Meluskey in trades, we shouldn't have to worry about our catching for either of the next two years, so we were happy to pass on IRod at $32, and with our concerns about Garcia's injury troubles, we watched him go all the way to $34.

Jeff Cirillo was tossed fourth, and while we were hoping for Koskie, we were pleasantly surprised when we picked him up for only $17, a couple of bucks below his Draft Value. Now we just had to worry about filling out our OF.

One of the rebuilding teams actually wound up drafting the top two offensive players below their Draft Value at the time, picking up both Johnny Damon and Shannon Stewart for $35. While they would have been nice additions even closer to $40, we preferred to try to buy additional depth.

Our next purchase was Garret Anderson at $25. While we're not too fond of his walk rate and overall skills, he remains a consistent and productive rotisserie player. We've even seen a few articles about the Angels stressing plate discipline this year, so while we're mildly concerned about the team's slow start, we also recognized that they faced a truly brutal April schedule.

We had planned to grab Chan Ho Park as we thought we valued him higher than almost any other site, but we weren't willing to go over $21 for him, and let him go at $22. Bartolo Colon went all the way to $35 after his great Opening Day start, so we were rather pleased when we picked up Chuck Finley, still a capable high-strikeout starter, for only $4.

Another of our primary OF targets, Jacque Jones, went for $29, so you can definitely see how inflation was driving up costs. With Pedro gone at $32 and in consideration of the other expensive starting pitchers listed above, we were then quite happy to draft Kevin Appier for $15. We were willing to push $20 for him as we believe he's healthy and ready to dominate for another year or two, and with Pettitte, Finley, Mays, and Pineiro, we felt we had a solid staff comprised mostly of pitchers on teams with above average offenses likely to help us in four categories.

However due to the excessive bidding on certain players, we were now regretting not pushing Nixon further at the beginning of the draft. We paid $23 for David Ortiz to lock in a quality power hitter as we felt he had the best overall situation of the remaining offensive players; he's a top breakout candidate as he's 26 with 2+ years of experience, he's hitting cleanup in a lineup with several other developing young hitters, and he has one of the best G-F ratios of any hitter in baseball at .97 for his career and .74 last year.

Two picks later we purchased our top offensive sleeper, Jeremy Giambi, for an acceptable $19. We knew most owners would have a difficult time bidding $20 for him, but his value is certainly increased in 5x5 leagues due to his presence atop a solid offense.

We now were stuck with $16 left for three players when most of the top offensive players were off the board. For our last two roster spots, we wanted an outfielder with power potential, and two pitchers with either good starting potential or solid strikeout rates in relief. We'd targeted LHP relievers Ted Lilly, Casey Fossum, and J.C. Romero in our drafts as pitchers with good K/9 ratios who either had the potential to start or close by mid-season. We also wanted high-upside guys instead of consistent older pitchers like Aaron Sele, who we let go for only $6.

After a good thirty more players were chosen, we picked up Brandon Lyon for only $3; we're not too concerned about any burnout potential and he showed great upside in his major league time last season. We're not expecting a Joe Mays-type season, but we hope he can at least produce close to $10 in value.

Very few capable offensive players were left on the board at this point and we had $13 remaining for two slots. We definitely wanted Ted Lilly and were willing to spend a few bucks to get him, and then had targeted Shane Spencer, Brian Buchanan, and Jeff Liefer as hitters likely to reach close to 30 homers if they can find the necessary playing time.

Spencer went at $3 right before we grabbed Lyon, and since we didn't know what we'd wind up spending on our other two pitchers, we decided to try for one of the other two outfielders. Buchanan went for $5, and that seemed a little excessive, but we miscalculated the available assets and were stuck paying $6 to secure Liefer. So our position players are a little weak but we still have a fairly balanced offense.

We nominated Lilly at a buck, and to our shock, no one challenged us, and we finished the draft with $6 left on the table. Despite our attempts at early aggressiveness, our results were only decent this year, although we weren't exactly alone as only three owners spent all their money, and besides our $6, the others left $1, $4, $5, $5, $6, and $8.

2002 Drafted Roster for Statistical Anomaly

C	5	Toby Hall
C	4	Mitch Meluskey
1B	17	Steve Cox
3B	17	Jeff Cirillo
CR	5	Doug Mientkiewicz
2B	5	Luis Rivas
SS	35	Derek Jeter
MF	5	Mike Young
OF	25	Garret Anderson
OF	19	Mike Cameron
OF	19	Jeremy Giambi
OF	25	Garret Anderson
OF	6	Jeff Liefer
UT	23	David Ortiz

SP	19	Andy Pettitte
SP	15	Kevin Appier
SP	5	Joel Pineiro
SP	4	Chuck Finley
P	3	Brandon Lyon
P	1	Joe Mays
P	1	Ted Lilly
RP	1	Kelvim Escobar
CL	10	Jeff Zimmerman

This league also has a three-man taxi squad, drafted immediately after the auction is completed. Teams select players in the order that they finished the draft and we were the third team finished. We were a little aggravated that J.C. Romero was picked up near the end of the draft, but we took some relatively safe gambles.

Damian Jackson fell to us, so we risked losing Casey Fossum to pick up a probable 20 SB utilityman. His trip to the DL has rather annoyed us, but he was still the correct pick at the time. Players drafted between our first two picks included Aaron Rowand, Colby Lewis, Brady Anderson, Chad Bradford, and Mike Stanton, so while we'd hoped Stanton would keep falling, we happily selected Fossum. Dave Riske and Dave Burba were among the next ten picks before we grabbed Todd Van Poppel in our belief that he'll vulture several wins this year. Ramiro Mendoza and Sterling Hitchcock were two injured players on whom we passed to take Van Poppel.

While we don't have much flexibility to rotate our pitchers, we still can use Fossum and Van Poppel occasionally if any of our starters has a rough week. We picked up Jack Cressend and Blake Stein off waivers to fill in for the DL'd Jeff Zimmerman and Damian Jackson, giving us a little more immediate flexibility; Cressend has started for us the last two weeks as Minnesota continues to play a relatively favorable schedule.

For the minor league draft, we had the kept the following nine players going into the draft: Joe Borchard, Chris Snelling, Esteban German, Justin Miller, Greg Nash, Dernell Stenson, Jeremy Johnson, Daylan Holt, and Chris Wakeland. We have a fairly good mix of guys ready to help by the second half (Borchard, German, and Miller), good 2004 prospects like Snelling, and then a bunch of wild cards at the bottom of our roster either stuck in AAAA or still in A-ball. Due to his late trade to the Padres, we lost the rights to outfielder Rich Gomez.

Each of these players will have a salary of $5 whenever we activate them, so we planned to focus on mostly additional offensive players with our five 2002 picks. We picked fourth in the first round, and missed out on Joe Mauer, Angel Berroa, and Orlando Hudson. Our choice was between Willie Harris and Gabe Gross. Considering Harris is starting at AAA and might be up anytime as a speedy utility guy, we selected him and watched Gross go with the next pick.

Considering the AA/A+ gap in our prospects, we wanted guys that could either contribute to our roster next season, or trade bait that could likely contribute to another owner's 2003 roster.

We were disappointed that Gross and John-Ford Griffin fell relatively early as we didn't pick again until #17, but we were left with the dilemma of when to take Andres Torres. Our only real draft error was that we decided upon Mark Ellis and then watched Torres go in the middle of the next round.

By our next pick at #37, the only prospects selected in which we had any significant interest were Tim Raines, Jr. and Michael Garciaparra. We again may have erred by selecting Tim Hummel over Eric Byrnes, but we're concerned by Byrnes' demotion and think Hummel might help at SS as early as August.

With pick #44 we selected our one pitcher, Justin Duchscherer, who we consider to be a very well-rounded prospect likely to be the first pitched recalled when one of the A's starters is injured as we expect. We still don't know who will need to miss a couple of months, but Duchscherer should nicely slot in our pitching staff.

Perhaps the most interesting player taken was Boston's Kevin Youkilis with pick #48, one selection before our last choice. Youkilis had an incredible 70:28 BB:K ratio in 183 AB at A- Lowell last year, and we expect him to move relatively quickly in the weak Boston system. However we were pleased to fill another weak area by selecting one of the top AL catching prospects in Miguel Olivio. We certainly didn't mean to select three White Sox and two Athletics, but considering the relative strength of each system, we believe we've added a good deal of quality AAA depth to our team.

Aside from adding Cressend and Stein for the injured Zimmerman and Jackson, we were also able to activate Ellis for the injured Luis Rivas. We expect that either Ellis or German will be the long-term solution for the A's at second, and if they run into troubles with the Tejada extension negotiations, we may have added the future keystone combos for two of the top young teams in the league.

Last night we completed our first trade of the year in this league, sending Steve Cox and Blake Stein for Terrence Long and Ryan Ludwick. The other team needed a 1B after losing Edgar (this league allows DHs to retain their most recent position qualification), and we wanted a solid outfielder, so now when the rest of our team is healthy, we can choose between Liefer, Jackson, and Ellis for UT with Long at OF and Dave Ortiz at 1B. This league also has a $300 salary cap, so saving the $12 between Cox and Long allows us to potentially add another sizable contract later in the year.

We'll likely look to trade Liefer as we need to open up roster spots for the three returning injured players and the recently promoted Justin Miller, but we've added flexibility and a top power-hitting OF prospect who the Rangers would really like to succeed as the primary bounty for Carlos Pena.

Our minor league system now looks like:

C	Miguel Olivo

2B	Esteban German
	Willie Harris

SS	Tim Hummel

OF	Joe Borchard
	Ryan Ludwick
	Chris Snelling
	Daylan Holt
	Jeremy Johnson
	Dernell Stenson
	Chris Wakeland

SP	Justin Duchscherer
	Justin Miller

We remain very weak on the corners but will have Mientkiewicz through at least next season and we're pleased with Cirillo and Ortiz for now. One great feature of this league is that you can keep as many keepers as you want, so we could go into next year's drafts with well over a dozen fairly cheap players along with a few very expensive contracts. Fortunately the only players we're losing after 2002 are Mike Cameron, Carlos Lee, and the just-acquired Long, and we have ready replacements in Borchard, Snelling, and now Ludwick. We should have enough talent to be able to deal a few of these guys for players to help this year, and while we're concerned by the injuries of a few of our players, we still believe we should remain competive the entire season despite a mildly slow start.

Today's Fantasy Rx: If you haven't filed your US federal income taxes, head over to here immediately to print out the form required to file for an extension.