Today's Fantasy Rx

In each of the last two years I've spent a couple of articles discussing The Fantasy Sports Invitational Challenge, a relatively new league for inter-site competition and bragging rights. We participated in the inaugural NL draft in 2002, although we unfortunately only managed a 10th place finish in 2002 thanks to a lack of starting position players and few saves outside of two good months from Vlad Nunez. Last season we moved up to 7th place as a result of finishing first in SB, ERA, and WHIP. As the league rules include an interesting twist that stipulates the 11th and 12th place finishers will not be invited to return the following season, we again hope to improve our standing this year.

FSICNL employs a snake draft to fill the 23-man rosters and four reserve slots of the NL 5x5 league. For the second consecutive year, the draft took place on March 7th. As there are no AB/IP max/mins, we decided prior to the draft to take no starting pitching. We instead targeted only relievers with good skills or a high chance of seeing several save opportunities. Since many of those pitchers regularly fall to the later rounds, we concentrated on offense throughout the first half of the draft. The goal of this strategy is to finish no worse than third place in saves, ERA, WHIP, and all of the hitting categories, likely insuring we finish among the top three teams in the final overall standings.

A random draw gave us the 11th pick in the first round, enabling us to draft two of the top fourteen players using the 11th and 14th picks. Prior to the draft, we concluded that six players were essentially guaranteed to go in the first 10 picks: Juan Pierre, who led NL batters in 5x5 value last year and easily could repeat in 2004, Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, Todd Helton, Mark Prior, and Eric Gagne. Assuming these six players were off the board, we hoped that either Edgar Renteria or Orlando Cabrera would remain available, as both are among the top ten overall offensive players and they were the top two shortstops on our board. With our second round pick, we hoped a four-category outfielder like Lance Berkman would be available, thereby giving us an excellent offensive foundation in four-to-five categories.

We planned to draft a first baseman and second baseman with our next two selections, preferably Derrek Lee and Jose Vidro. In the fifth and sixth rounds, we wanted the best closer remaining, hopefully either Joe Borowski or the underrated Armando Benitez, and then perhaps a catcher like Jason Kendall. Another outfielder and a respectable third baseman looked like good choices in the seventh and eighth rounds, after which we'd draft for offensive value from the ninth round through the twelfth, specifically targeting two more outfielders, a cornerman, and a middle infielder.

Longtime Rotohelp readers know we highly value our LPR system when we want to select pitchers with quality skills as well as solid upside and/or little downside. Five skill ratios established as minimum targets form the foundation of the LPR system: 6 or more strikeouts per nine innings, 3 or less walks per nine innings, 1 or less homer per nine innings, 9 or less hits per nine innings, and a ground-fly ratio no lower than 1.00.

Eric Gagne, John Smoltz, Billy Wagner, and Joe Borowski are the four NL closers that met those targets in 2003. The only starters that qualified are Mark Prior, Kevin Millwood, and Brad Penny. However, several other pitchers matched our minimums last year, including Guillermo Mota, Rheal Cormier, LaTroy Hawkins, Mike Koplove, Tim Spooneybarger, Chris Capuano, and Javier Lopez. While we saw little upside in drafting Lopez since we never would run him in Coors, the remaining half-dozen pitchers were good bets, especially since we aren't required to keep active pitchers in our lineup. The FSIC rules theoretically allow us to roster nine injured/minor league pitchers all season, so we even compiled a list of minor league prospects almost certain to spend all of 2004 in the minors since they don't require 40-man roster spots at least for another year. (Owners in similar circumstances may want to note Chicago's Justin Jones, Montreal's Clint Everts, and Florida's Jeff Allison and Scott Olsen topped our list.)

However, we wanted no more than a couple of injured pitchers or minor leaguers since even someone like Cormier might see some save opportunities. Mota and Hawkins in particular should earn double-digit value as setup men who automatically will move to closer if either Gagne or Borowski respectively hit the DL. We also hoped to grab a couple of other setup men with the potential to close, and if necessary, we'd leave them benched or replace them.

Our last preparation step involved compiling a list of speedsters likely to accumulate double-digit steals even in reserve roles and another list of youngsters who likely will win roster spots and could emerge as excellent bargains if given starting jobs. In 2003, Morgan Ensberg would have been an ideal candidate for the latter list.

The half-dozen most promising speedsters were Tom Goodwin, Kerry Robinson, Endy Chavez, Ryan Freel, Damian Jackson, and Reggie Taylor, who may win a job with the Reds and likely will see significant playing time if any Cincinnati starter suffers an injury. Jason Lane led the promising bench players, followed by Terrmel Sledge, Keith Ginter, Chase Utley, Chad Tracy, Brady Clark, J.J. Davis, and Felipe Lopez.

Of course, several unexpected first round picks caused us to completely reevaluate our draft strategy in the minutes prior to our initial selection. I'll discuss our draft experiences in detail in tomorrow's article.

Today's Fantasy Rx: Don't game plan too much for any draft and especially don't spend too much time preplanning for straight drafts. Your fellow owners always can act in unexpected ways, making your player ranking and valuation far more important than any strategy based on the actions of others.