Today's Fantasy Rx

We've read about Scoresheet baseball for years at various sites, including JD Mah's excellent At the Plate, and we've talked with Scoresheet founder Jeff Barton at the AFL conference. However we can't stand list drafts where a computer makes picks for you, and we've never seen a good opportunity to join a Scoresheet keeper league with a live draft.

Fortunately Baseball Prospectus launched three Scoresheet leagues this year for readers, and we were able to join the NL league drafting at Indianapolis (BP Indy) on the Saturday prior to the beginning of the season. The only downside was that this was a straight draft and not an auction, however we didn't overly mind as few Scoresheet leagues employ an auction format.

For those of you unfamiliar with Scoresheet, you draft teams of no less than 30 players, and each week you submit a lineup with your batting orders against both right-handed and left-handed starters, as well as your preferred pitching rotation, order to deploy relievers, and several other detailed strategy instructions. Among the instructions for your team are when to bunt, how to use pinch hitters, what defensive replacements to use, and more importantly, how you want the computer to run your pitching staff.

After each week of games, the Scoresheet computer takes your lineup and simulates a half-dozen games against other teams in your league based on the performances of the players on your teams over that past week. While I've played baseball simulations on the computer for most of the last two decades, we were looking forward to trying a game that combines some of the best aspects of traditional sim play with fantasy baseball.

Of course nearly every owner in the league has played the game for years, so we figured to be at a slight disadvantage, for which we attempted to compensate by researching the simulation as much as possible. We used Runs Above Replacement (RAR), calculated from our projections, to determine our draft list for both pitchers and hitters.

As we plan to participate in this league for years, we settled on a few primary draft strategies. First, as we don't believe in drafting pitching early in most drafts due to the excess risk incurred over position players, we wanted to roster a complete offense before worrying about our pitching. The other reason to draft hitting is that the first couple hitters at each position are comparatively more valuable than any starting pitcher except maybe Randy. We targeted players in their prime as much as possible to provide both quality performances now and over the next few years. The BP Indy rules allow us to keep thirteen players from year-to-year, so our plan is keep our entire offense, along with our four best starting pitchers and our next most valuable pitcher regardless of role. We even can keep any minor leaguers with less than 70 career AB or 25 IP, and we only lose picks at the end of the draft, beginning with the 35th round, for any minor leaguers kept.

Second, our projections did not account for defensive differences, but we wanted to select players with roughly average range numbers with the intention of rostering a couple of defensive replacements. We also wanted a couple players with good position flexibility.

Third, we again employed our LPR list as a supplement to our RAR list to choose starters, but our targets were similar to those in roto: we wanted young right-handers in good parks with promising dominance and command. Hopefully at least four of the half-dozen young starters we hope to roster will emerge as quality pitchers by the second half while not pitching badly for the first few months of the year.

While Scoresheet allows you to designate a closer, we see no reason to reserve any pitcher for late outings since we the simulation doesn't have to worry about keeping our pitchers happy. We wanted several quality relievers, including at least two good lefties, and we hoped to keep the pen as flexible as possible.

Lastly we planned to use many of our later picks to roster quality bench players, although we also hoped to roster a good mix of left-handed and right-handed starting position players to cut down on platoon advantages for our opponents. We saw no need to specifically target additional starting position players beyond our starting 8, however we wanted a good group of reserves to maximize pinch-hitting platoon advantages and give us a quality cushion in case of injury. Any youngsters with good upside that we managed to roster would be a bonus.

Due to e-mail difficulties, we didn't find out we were drafting third until we showed up on draft day even as most of the league had planned their strategies for a month. Bonds went first as we expected, and while we only ranked Vlad fifth on our list, we weren't surprised when he went second over Giles, Pujols, or Berkman since Vlad certainly has more long-term upside than the other three. Plus, Scoresheet allows you to keep one or two players each year who've switched leagues, so Kevin likely will keep Vlad on his team for the next decade.

Given the extent we've discussed building an infield before an outfield in recent weeks, I doubt any of you will be surprised that we eagerly snatched up Pujols with pick #3. Although we may be stuck with a left fielder in another year, he qualifies at first and third in 2003, and we expect him to anchor our offense for no less than several years.

The first big shock of the draft occurred at pick #5 following the selection of Berkman: Mark Prior went as the first pitcher drafted, and while we only had ranked him seventh on our pitching list, like Vlad, we can understand why Prior has more value in lifetime keeper leagues.

Over the next five rounds we filled out the top of our batting order. Jose Vidro was behind only Kent on our 2B list, and we happily grabbed him in Round #2 before rostering Edgar Renteria, the top shortstop on the board, with our third round pick. We simply took the best player available with our next three selections, and we were rather ecstatic to have the opportunity to draft Gary Sheffield, Ryan Klesko, and Cliff Floyd. Although none of them will likely exceed their recent performances, all should remain strong contributors for a few years.

By our 7th round pick most established starters with good upside were off the table, but we still saw a nice variety of younger arms. While we rated Kurt Ainsworth the 15th best pitcher in the league, 26 pitchers were chosen before him, and we were pleased to select someone with the upside of Jake Peavy in round 8.

Having rostered two young future aces and a top four performer at six offensive positions, we wanted to lock down catching in round 9. We debated between Eli Marrero and Michael Barrett, and since we saw more immediate offensive potential in Marrero, we decided he made the most sense. Our first major break occurred when Barrett remained available while we rostered five more players, and we eagerly snatched him in round 15 once we'd drafted six starting pitchers and a centerfielder.

Our only major concession to defense occurred in round 11. While we rated Corey Patterson the second worst player on the entire draft board, he also was the only young outfielder with excellent defense and power upside on the board after round 9, when we'd hoped to draft Brad Wilkerson before looking at catching. Patterson owns a 2.17 range number, only .2 below Andruw Jones, the top-rated defensive outfielder. An average outfielder possesses a 2.10 fielding number, and while Patterson alone won't compensate for Floyd's 2.04 and Sheffield's 2.03, we're willing to take one position with weak offense to insure our pitchers don't allow a tremendous abundance of base hits.

With Ainsworth and Peavy as our potential aces, we were pleased to add pitchers of equal potential in Carlos Zambrano, Adam Eaton, and Juan Cruz in rounds 10, 13, and 14. Our selection of El Duque in round 13 as a potential veteran innings eater hasn't worked out too well as we discovered his injury that evening after returning home from the draft, however hopefully he'll contribute to our team later in the season.

We wanted eight established starters to avoid ever needing the "AAA pitcher" with something like an 8.00+ ERA that the sim computer places into your lineup if you run out of innings, so we rostered Jeff Suppan and Darren Dreifort in rounds 16 and 17. With the draft almost half over, we'd fulfilled all our primary goals in rostering the players who would see the vast majority of playing time on our team.

For the next several rounds we alternated selecting quality pitching with position players who could contribute in case of injury. Beginning with our 18th pick, we selected Chris Stynes, Clay Condrey, Miguel Batista, Tim Worrell, Brandon Villafuerte, Jason Lane, Jose Mesa, Mark Guthrie, and Morgan Ensberg. Stynes gives us a solid infield back-up with decent defense at two positions, Lane and Ensberg could start in Houston as soon as early summer, and Condrey and Batista both own good skills and provide nice backups in case of injury to our starters. We ranked Worrell as the 10th best reliever on the board and gladly grabbed him in round 21. Villafuerte also looks like one of the top 20 relievers in the league, and Guthrie's not only tough on lefties but owns the skills to succeed against righties.

Experienced sim players may question our Mesa pick, however he fits our philosophy of closers. While we're not designating anyone, our bullpen rotation normally will deploy Worrell, Villafuerte, and/or Guthrie in the middle innings, and since Mesa should post an ERA lower than the league average, he won't hurt us pitching the occasional ninth inning.

In round 27 we began concentrating on defense by rostering Neifi Perez, the top rated fielding shortstop in the draft, followed by the 2.13 fielding rating of Ricky Ledee, who also doubles as a potential replacement for Patterson if he struggles, and the 2.18 fielding rating of Brian L. Hunter. Successive picks of Troy O'Leary and Orlando Merced gave us a good complement of left-handed pinch-hitters and hopefully enough at-bats to weather the annual health problems of Floyd and Sheffield.

As Scoresheet only allows owners to submit a lineup with 30 names each week, we wanted to take a couple players with decent immediate upside with our last few picks rather than simply grab A-ball prospects like several other owners. We probably should have taken Ray King instead of Clay Condrey back in round 19, but we didn't mind rostering Scott Eyre near the end of the draft. With Villafuerte on our team, we saw little downside to spending a pick on Trevor Hoffman, who should possess good trade value even if he doesn't return until 2004. We spent our last two picks on Seung Song and Jason Middlebrook, two younger starters with good skills and the potential to join relatively shallow rotations in normally pitcher-friendly ballparks by the start of summer.

Our 2003 BP Indy Drafted Roster
C: Eli Marrero, Michael Barrett
CR: Ryan Klesko, Albert Pujols, and Morgan Ensberg
MI: Jose Vidro, Edgar Renteria, Chris Stynes, and Neifi Perez
OF: Cliff Floyd, Corey Patterson, Cliff Floyd, Ricky Ledee, Brian L. Hunter, Troy O'Leary, Orlando Merced, and Jason Lane.

Starters: Kurt Ainsworth, Jake Peavy, Carlos Zambrano, Darren Dreifort, Jeff Suppan, Clay Condrey, Orlando Hernandez, Jason Middlebrook, and Seung Song.

Long relievers: Clay Condrey, Miguel Batista, and Juan Cruz.

Middle relievers: Tim Worrell, Brandon Villafuerte, Mark Guthrie, Jose Mesa, Scott Eyre, and Trevor Hoffman.

El Duque's injury left us with no decisions as to whom to bench since El Duque and Hoffman opened the year on the DL and Lane, Song, and Middlebrook debuted in the minors; the remaining 30 players comprised our lineup for the first week of games.

On offense, we built our lineup around the #2 hole since we've seen several studies suggesting that a team's best hitter should bat second. We concentrated on OBP, then SLG, when constructing our batting order, and since we possesses a nice breakdown with four right-handers, three lefties, and a switch-hitter, we decided to alternate throughout the lineup.

We view all our starters similarly, so we'll deploy the best match-ups each week with Suppan and Dreifort likely seeing the most time on our bench. Our bullpen is divided into long relievers and middle relievers, with no one reserved exclusively for short relief.

The following lineup is exactly what we submitted for week one games. For anyone interested in the details but unfamiliar with Scoresheet, please refer to the Batting lineup instructions and Pitching lineup instructions.

In short, "steal" is whether or not we ever want that played to attempt a stolen base, "bunt" is the earliest inning for the player to sacrifice bunt, "rank" is the order to deploy pinch-hitters. For pitchers, the "hook" number is when to pull the pitcher based on the number of earned runs, half the number of unearned runs, and half the number of baserunners currently on the base. If a starter with a '4' hook gave up three earned runs, one unearned run, and loaded the bases before facing a right-handed hitter, he would be pulled for the reliever with the lowest "vs RHB" number. "Inning" is the earliest inning that reliever can enter a game, and the order of bullpen pitchers determines the order for the computer to choose extra starters on a weekly basis if our five starting pitchers don't accumulate enough innings. Please refer to the Scoresheet website for additional information.

League: NL BP INDY       Team Number: #3     
Team Name: Always Polko-Cola

STARTING LINEUP vs. RHP             
 #     name       pos  steal  bunt  rank
592 G.Sheffield   RF    Y     -     2
589 C.Floyd       LF    Y     -     1
476 A.Pujols      3B    N     -     3
406 R.Klesko      1B    Y     -     4
439 J.Vidro       28    N     -     5
528 E.Renteria    SS    Y     -     6
586 C.Patterson   CF    Y     -     8
355 E.Marrero      C    Y     -     7

BENCH vs. RHP

625 R.Ledee       OF    N     -     9
619 O.Merced     OF-1B  N     -    11
617 T.O'Leary     OF    N     -    10
356 M.Barrett      C    N     -    13
457 C.Stynes      INF   N     -    14
496 M.Ensberg    3B-1B  N     1    15
628 B.L.Hunter    OF    Y     -    12
530 N.Perez       INF   N     1     -
 

STARTERS vs. LHP                  
 #     name       pos   bunt  rank

592 G.Sheffield   RF    -     2
406 R.Klesko      1B    -     4
476 A.Pujols      3B    -     3
439 J.Vidro       28    -     5
528 E.Renteria    SS    -     6
589 C.Floyd       LF    -     1
355 E.Marrero      C    -     7
586 C.Patterson   CF    -     8

Bench vs. LHP

496 M.Ensberg    3B-1B  1    15
457 C.Stynes      INF   -    14
356 M.Barrett      C    -    13
628 B.L.Hunter    OF    -    12
617 T.O'Leary     OF    -    10
619 O.Merced     OF-1B  -    11
625 R.Ledee       OF    -     9
530 N.Perez       INF   1     -

STARTING ROTATION          
 #     name           hook   closer hk    teams to face

110 Adam Eaton          4        4           -
118 Kurt Ainsworth      4        4           -
 69 Jake Peavy          4        4           -
 65 Carlos Zambrano     4        4           -
153 Darren Dreifort    3.5       4           -

BULLPEN       
 #     name         hook   inning   vs RHB  vs LHB

707  Jeff Suppan      3       1       9        9
115  Clay Condrey     3       1       6        7
 70  Juan Cruz        3       1       5        6
 35  Miguel Batista   3       1       7        8
273  Scott Eyre      1.5      6       8        5
279  Tim Worrell     2.5      6       1        2
328  B.Villafuerte   2.5      6       3        4
312  Mark Guthrie    2.5      6       4        1
270  Jose Mesa       2.5      6       2        3

CLOSER  (Optional)


DEFENSIVE SUBSTITUTIONS

 C   -
1B   -      
2B   -  
3B   -
SS  530   N.Perez
LF  628   B.L.Hunter
CF   -
RF  625   R.Ledee

One of the irritating aspects to the game is you don't see the results of any strategic changes until after you submit your lineup card for the following week. As pitchers like Cruz and Villafuerte didn't see much game time for us in week one, we lowered the hook numbers of our starters for the last two weeks in the hope that our relievers will limit the potential damage of the expected inconsistency of our young starters.

The good news is that our team is 7-5 and tied for our division lead thanks to the fifth best offense and fourth best pitching staff in the league. We expect we'll remain competitive as long as our bullpen protects our starters and we avoid multiple major injuries.

Internet Challenge

SP(6)
Randy Johnson: Sun:@STL(B.Tomko)???
Roy Oswalt: Fri:@MIL(G.Rusch)
Wade Miller: Sat:@MIL(T.Ritchie)
Roy Halladay: Fri:@BOS(C.Fossum)
Jason Schmidt: Fri:@LA(K.Brown)
Mark Prior: Sat:@PIT(K.Wells)
Josh Beckett: Sat:@NYM(T.Glavine)
Kurt Ainsworth: Sat:@LA(H.Nomo)

No starts: Pedro, Schilling, Morris, Millwood, and Wood.

We're not going to risk running Randy given we have no idea who will start for Arizona on Sunday, and few of the other starts stand out as they're all road games. Prior is the only obvious pull given his outright dominance this year. We also like the match-ups of Miller, Beckett, and Ainsworth. Rusch has pitched nearly as good as Oswalt, however Oswalt's excellent skill history should give him an edge here. Our choice comes down to Halladay or Schmidt, and while we're concerned over Schmidt's concentration since he's spend the last couple days with his ailing mother, we're more worried about Boston pounding Halladay. The inconsistent New England weather also makes Halladay's Sunday start much riskier than Schmidt's Friday appearance in LA.

The combination of a Colorado homestand, Helton's early-season excellence, and our available roster spot for Jesus Colome make Helton a logical addition to our roster. Both Larry Walker and Preston Wilson join Helton in the lineup with Berkman heading to the bench due to his day-to-day status. Deploying our Rockies allows us to bench Phelps and Huff, and we don't see a logical lineup slot for Jose Hernandez or Ichiro; we considered adding a third catcher or third baseman in favor of one of these two benchwarmers, however we don't see any overtly helpful weekend matchups. We'll reconsider this situation on Monday.

The Umpire Hunter(15th lg; 617th overall)
Week 3b: April 18-April 20

C	Eli Marrero		580
C	Toby Hall		460
1B	Todd Helton		1850
1B	Frank Thomas		920
2B	Alfonso Soriano		1460
2B	Luis Castillo		1210
3B	Aaron Boone		1010
3B	Aramis Ramirez		820
SS	Alex Rodriguez		2010
SS	Nomar Garciaparra	1330
OF	Vlad Guerrero		2010
OF	Larry Walker		1400
OF	Manny Ramirez		1610
OF	Hideki Matsui		750
OF	Austin Kearns		650
OF	Dave Roberts		620
DH	Preston Wilson		1220
DH	Orlando Cabrera		1030

SP	Roy Oswalt		1280
SP	Kerry Wood		990
SP	Wade Miller		990
SP	Roy Halladay		890
SP	Mark Prior		750
SP	Josh Beckett		700
SP	Kurt Ainsworth		430
RP	Scott Williamson	960
RP	Mike MacDougal		750
RP	Matt Anderson		700
RP	Matt Mantei		700

Today's Fantasy Rx: We would appreciate any comments or suggestions regarding our lineup choices. Even if you're not a Scoresheet veteran, we welcome advice from all different viewpoints as we explore different aspects of our Scoresheet "strategery".